


Gravity Walk

by adreus



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Depression, Gen, M/M, Second-Hand Embarrassment, Series Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 64,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adreus/pseuds/adreus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you think maybe this is your problem? I'm not the one with the crush on the cute Japanese transfer."</p><p>"He's not a transf—that's not what I—"</p><p>"But he's still cute, right?"</p><p>“I’ll tell you who’s <i>not</i> cute—”</p><p>(Kaito, Ryoga, and Yuma as Asian American high school students in California, dealing with lyfe, loves, depression, and whatever it is that comes after. And being super embarrassing while they're at it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Batman & Robin

**Author's Note:**

> hi! if you're ever confused or curious or concerned, you can see my notes [here!](http://adreus.tumblr.com/gw)
> 
> i'm currently in the process of editing/revamping this fic, so edited chapters have a note before them, and if you notice any inconsistencies, please bear with me! i'll put a note here when i'm finished. **edited chapters use a custom stylesheet:** please download as a pdf if on-the-go, or keep my sheet enabled for maximum accuracy.
> 
> for the ship conscious: kaito+/ryoga, kaito+yuma, kaito/chris, ryoga/yuma, by order of intensity. **full series spoilers incoming!**

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> posted: 16 december 2013  
> edited : 15 february 2015  
> —
> 
> SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 2011.

_wait and see_  
_empathy_  
_you're not the only one_

Kaito wakes up.

He doesn't really _want_ to wake up, because it's summer and because it's been summer for the past two months—long, boring days with nothing to do and nothing to look forward to—but he doesn't really have a choice in the matter when August sunlight slips through his blinds and sits on his eyes, warm, merciless.

Kaito groans and turns over in bed, stubbornly searching for another comfortable position under the sheets. It's useless; the timer on the fan standing at the opposite end of the room switched off last night, and the remote fell victim to the clutches of Kaito's bed sometime last month, so now under the sheets is too hot and out of the sheets is too cool, and if Kaito gets up to switch the fan on manually, he'll be too awake to sleep again, anyway. It's a lose-lose situation, really, just like everything else that's happened in recent memory, but, hey, Kaito's getting used to that kind of thing, isn't he?

Kaito rolls onto his back, blinks his eyes open, and stares at the ceiling. He tries to remember what day it is, tries to remember when school'll start and he'll at least have some homework to do, but it's not a successful pursuit. He doesn't think he's looked at a calendar for weeks now, so he doesn't have the slightest clue as to what day it is, and the date is equally elusive. But he does know it's August, and he does know that it feels like it's _been_ August for a while, so… maybe there's only a week or so left of summer? If he's lucky?

He… is looking forward to homework. He'd wonder when exactly his life became this pathetic, but he can already pinpoint the moment to the minute.

_Pinpoint_. That's a good word. He could use that…

It’s… stupid, but Kaito's written a lot of poetry lately, put down his thoughts as was suggested on loose leaf paper and in notebooks, crumpled them up halfway finished, thrown them at the trash bin and missed. Tried to read some books instead, gave up on the first chapter because the protagonist was boring or Kaito doesn't like the voice or he just can't get into it, and that's what the mess on his desk is. He meant to clean that up a couple of times, too; he tried to clean his desk and, failing that, tried the closet or his drawers or any other part of his room, but he gave up on all of that, too, failed so spectacularly that it's messier now than it was before.

Well… whatever. He doesn't care. It's not like he's trying to impress anyone.

Kaito registers the tingling. He closes his eyes and counts to ten.

Time for breakfast.

It is, apparently, Saturday. Kaito finds this out on the way downstairs, when he sees Haruto parked in front of the TV like he always is on Saturday mornings, and Kaito can figure it's a new episode from Haruto's position alone: he's at the edge of his seat, eyes wide, cereal soggy and forgotten on the cushion next to him. "Morning," says Kaito, and Haruto's response is short and inattentive, but he does scoot over when Kaito picks up the cereal bowl and takes its spot.

Today, it's the latest installment of the newest _Batman_ series that's got Haruto so excited. Kaito considers his own logoed pajamas and figures he should appreciate his little brother's taste in Saturday morning cartoons, but Kaito's still kind of miffed that no one's bothered to properly animate Jason's run as Robin yet. Jason is his favorite.

Kaito settles in and downs the milk-and-cereal soup since he knows Haruto won't. It's only during the commercial that Haruto really registers Kaito's presence, turns to him and wrinkles his nose at the sight of the breakfast-that-once-was. Kaito snorts and slurps up the remaining milk directly from the bowl.

"I'll get you a new one," Kaito says, getting up and heading to the kitchen. "How long've you been up?"

Haruto brings his index finger to his chin and sticks out his lower lip. "Hmmmm."

Kaito returns and presents the prince with his meal, messes up his hair, and kisses him on the cheek. Haruto accepts the offering and shovels the cereal into his mouth, munching on it contemplatively.

"When Dad left," he finally decides. "I think."

Their dad, Kaito calculates, left for his hour long commute maybe two hours ago. As much as he hates waking up in general, that timing makes Kaito feel more like a lump than usual.

"Niisan?"

"Hm?"

"You doing anything today?"

"No," says Kaito, sitting down again. "Why?"

"You wasted all summer doing nothing," Haruto points out. He chews at his lip like there's more he wants to say, but now that it's time to say it, he's not sure if he wants to anymore. Staring at his bowl and playing with the spoon, salvaging the bran and dropping it back in again, he seems to decide on silence.

"You're right," prods Kaito, and then, gently, "Did you have something in mind?"

Haruto doesn't mince words; now that Kaito's _asked_ , there's no mercy. "Why don't you go see Chris?"

He winces.

"Chris," Kaito says evenly, "is at Dad's office."

"And Dad," replies Haruto, scooting over on the sofa to reveal he's been sitting on something, "left this at home." He motions for Kaito to take it; Kaito does, brow furrowed, and quickly realizes that it's a wallet. Kaito's mouth opens like he wants to say something but no words come out, and Kaito stares at Haruto, whose expression has become the most angelic grin the boy can muster, a smile that's historically meant innocence but is apparently graduating into something far more sinister.

In Kaito's hands is his dad's wallet. His dad's wallet has a lot of important things in it—money, for one, and his driver’s license, a few credit cards, his social security, but what it also has is a keycard. A keycard that unlocks his office and secures his parking space, and a few other important things, like labs and a database.

Basically, Dr. Faker's entire work day is impaired by the keycard's absence, something Kaito knows because this has happened before; he's had to drop it off before, not this summer but the last, because their dad only seems to be an irresponsible asshole if it can directly inconvenience Kaito at that particular moment in time.

"Niisan?" prods Haruto, because Kaito is glaring at the wallet, thinking how this isn't his problem at all, how Haruto totally planned this in another one of his frustrating attempts to get Kaito and their dad to get along.

"He called?" asks Kaito, because if he didn't—well, Kaito isn't exactly a Boy Scout.

Haruto nods. "He said you weren't picking up your phone."

Of course he wasn't. Kaito doesn't even know where his phone _is_ ; presumably he lost it to the same monster that swallowed the fan remote, and the battery was already down, so no less than a clean up of his entire room has to be conducted before it'll resurface, but, hey, whatever. The only person Kaito ever calls is… well, no one. He doesn't even have a texting plan.

"Niisan," says Haruto again, and Kaito scowls because he knows he's not winning here, because when was the last time he won at anything? Haruto will just pout or something and Kaito'll have no way to refuse then, and—and—you know, he… actually hasn't… seen Chris in a while… so…

...Maybe that bike to the bus stop, maybe the bus ride to the city that follows, won't be so bad if he gets to see his only—friend? contact?—uh, if he gets to see Chris.

"Fine," Kaito says, sighing, but not before snatching a twenty. "Go call Droite."

Haruto gives him a toothed grin and a quick hug, and you'd think Kaito just promised the kid a candy fountain or something. But just as Haruto's about to go and call their neighbor, _Batman_ 's back on and Haruto looks from Kaito to the TV and back again, anxious.

Whether or not Haruto agrees, Kaito has had enough of Bruce Wayne for a lifetime, so he ruffles his little brother's hair again and relieves him of his duties with a kiss to the forehead. Grabs the house phone, heads upstairs. He has to get ready, anyway.

Kaito calls Droite and more tells than asks about dropping Haruto off for a few hours, but Droite's known him long enough—since they moved here—so his being a jerk is nothing new to her. Besides, even if she doesn't like Kaito, Haruto is impossible to dislike, and Droite isn't free today but her boyfriend will be around, so she says it's okay. Haruto'll be happy to hear that—he loves Gauche. But Haruto seems to find a way to love everyone.

Upstairs, Kaito wades through his room to his armoire and has a staring contest with his wardrobe. He's mostly spent the summer in old T-shirts and the same pair of navy blue sweatpants, but that's probably not the proper attire for visiting your dad at his company in the city—or, more significantly, for visiting your only friend/contact/whatever at his internship, especially after…

Well. The last time Kaito talked to Chris in person was a few weeks ago, when Chris came around to drop papers off with Faker for the internship or something, which, you know, total crap since Chris could've just dropped them at the actual office. It was just an excuse to see Kaito in person and suggest that Kaito maybe come up to the city and intern, too.

Kaito snapped at him, told Chris he wanted absolutely nothing to do with his dad _or_ his stupid company or anything else in the world, to be honest, and that if Chris could do the world a favor and keep his unnaturally big nose out of other people's business, it would be fantastic.

Chris was exasperated by Kaito's violent response, thought that Kaito would've _liked_ something to distract him, and said that he didn't think his nose was that big, but, hey, Kaito probably knew better, and Chris would see him around once he had some time to pull himself together.

Now, as Kaito pulls on jeans—looser than he remembers—and a Rockman tee, the embarrassment at the memory is almost too overwhelming to bear. He knows Chris is one to hold grudges—once he didn't talk to Kaito for five solid weeks because he was mad about a disagreement between _their dads_ —but he hopes that Chris will cut him some slack this time.

Kaito's never entirely sure what to expect with him, you know?

Anyway.

Kaito stuffs his dad's wallet in one pocket, stuffs his own things—keys, wallet, no phone, no iPod—in the other, and heads back downstairs, his steps a little heavier and faster than necessary. Haruto is still watching cartoons—now it's the latest installment of _Duel Monsters_ , another classic from Kaito's childhood, but something Kaito thinks he’s finally outgrown.

"Hey," Kaito says, since Haruto is still in pajamas with his hair a mess, "go get ready."

"Hm?"

"Did you think Droite was coming here?"

"No," says Haruto, who looks like he did. "Of course not."

"Droite has satellite, too, I promise," Kaito says. "Gauche probably DVRs your shows." Man-baby that he is.

Haruto's face lights up at the mention of Gauche, and Kaito smiles, small.

"Go on."

Haruto gets to his feet, wincing. Kaito tries to remember if he's left Haruto alone with _anyone_ besides himself or sometimes their dad for longer than a few minutes this past summer. The answer he reaches is no, and he bites his lip in nervousness, wondering if he trusts Gauche or not, but he… Kaito can't be around Haruto all the time, right, especially not after school starts, and Gauche is a big jock but he’s not _bad_ , so…

“Hey,” he says later, when they’re outside Droite’s door and Haruto's trying to reach the bell without shifting his weight too much, “don’t strain yourself, okay?”

Haruto settles carefully on his heels and looks at him, frowning. “Yeah. Take care of yourself, too.”

Kaito opens his mouth to argue that he doesn’t need to, but Haruto glares at him, and that’s enough to shut him up before he starts.

Haruto prods, like he's the guardian and Kaito's the child, “Did you bring your medicine?”

“Only if you did," says Kaito.

Haruto crosses his arms. “Niisan.”

Kaito definitely doesn’t pout. “Just… be careful, okay?”

“Okay, Mom,” Haruto says, and he grins when Kaito doesn't have a comeback.

The door opens and they’re met with Droite’s boyfriend, who grins and scoops Haruto up in his arms, safe and smiling and happy.

Kaito waves good-bye.


	2. Farts & Cat Poop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> posted: 22 december 2013  
> edited : 15 february 2015  
> —
> 
> SATURDAY, AUGUST 27, 2011.

He almost kills Cathy on his way to the bus; maybe kills her cat headphones when he knocks them off, maybe almost kills the guys she’s travelling with, but, hey, who cares, she survived, and that's what really matters.

He’s late for the bus, too. By the time he manages to figure out when the hell it’s coming and which bus route he’s supposed to take, the last few people are taking their seats, and he has to wave his arms around and yell a curse word or two for the driver to notice him and stop and open up the doors.

Kaito shakes in every last bit of his dad’s change and then stares at every taken seat and every pole with someone’s hand grabbing it, and then falls over when the bus lurches forward before he’s settled. In the end he’s basically forced to hold the ceiling, which is fun in that his arms feel like they’re about to fall off, and his shoulders groan in protest of the effort it takes not to invade the personal space of everyone nearby. The ride is about an hour and thirty minutes long, but there’re plenty of stops before the one he wants, so he’s lucky at least in that eventually he manages to steal a seat from an old lady and massage his arms.

The seat is warm and smells like a nice mix of farts and cat poop. Kaito hopes that his dad’s wallet will catch the scent.

It’s afternoon by the time he gets to his destination, and he’s moderately aware that he’s hungry and his stomach kind of hurts for it, but he’s also angry enough with his dad and public transportation and something about the way Gauche looked at him not to care, so he pulls up his stupid loose jeans and walks to his dad’s stupid building, presses his face against the stupid glass, scouting for any faces he might recognize, then walks in.

There’s a Starbucks to the left of the lobby and Kaito remembers it being mad expensive when Chris treated him last year, so he heads there first. Buys himself a trenta caramel macchiato—whatever that is—charges it on his dad’s credit card, tastes it, scowls, and throws it in the trash. Then he buys another one and a roll, heads to the lobby, and gives the trenta to the receptionist, who was staring wistfully at the café when Kaito walked in, like she was debating whether it was worth it to spend the five dollars or not.

“I’m here for Faker,” he says, while she tilts her head at the drink, but she nods, recognizes him, and Chris told her Kaito was coming.

Which, of course he did.

Of course Haruto can’t be the only one plotting against him; now it’s Chris, too, and Dad, probably, leaving his wallet at home on purpose as all of them attempt an intervention. An intervention that maybe would have had the faintest possibility of working if it didn’t involve Kaito's getting up in the morning, moving anywhere--least of all _here_ \--taking public transportation, or, you know, a little thing some people refer to as “existing.”

“Fifth floor,” the receptionist advises him, and Kaito, who’s already heading to the elevators, scowls again. He _knows_.

She doesn’t thank him for the coffee, either, which strikes him as kind of rude. See if he uses his dad’s credit card to treat her the next time he’s forced to come here.

He stands stiffly as he waits for the elevator to come down from the top floor, and his stomachache is getting worse, so he takes a bite of the roll but it doesn’t really help. It’s nothing physically wrong that’s making him sick now—it’s something about staring at the elevator and waiting for it to open that kind of makes him want to keel over in stress and maybe die, because there’s something that—that…

...Well, there’s something about knowing that Chris rides up and down here every day that bothers him, knowing that this lobby and those elevators and the floors they lead up to are Chris’s everyday place that makes Kaito feel... exhilarated isn’t the word, and neither is embarrassed, but, fine, there’s some misplaced heat in his cheeks when he thinks about it. The scenarios start to play in his head before he can efficiently murder the directors; scenarios like the possibility that right after the _ding_ the doors will slide open and there will be Chris, who Kaito hasn’t seen or spoken with in weeks, and Kaito will be an angry mess whose clothes smell like cat poop and farts and whose mouth tastes like bad caramel macchiatos, and Chris will—

The _ding_ sounds, the elevator opens, Kaito’s heart beat-beat-beats, aaaand there’s no one there.

He walks in like he has a limp, misses the button for the fifth floor two times, then slams it so hard his wrist hurts. He curses, grits his teeth; calculates how long this venture is going to take, how long it’ll be before he gets home.

Haruto must be having fun right now.

In losing his phone and lacking a watch, Kaito doesn’t know what time it is, but he’s sure that Haruto’s cartoon marathon is over, that he and Gauche are playing games or whatever it is they do together, laughing and enjoying themselves without Kaito there to be the stick in the mud. In his ever-active stomach, Kaito feels the same squirming that he felt when he saw Gauche earlier in the day, and he frowns at his trembling fist.

The elevator _dings_ again, and Kaito walks out onto the fifth floor. Most of the executive offices and one or two of the more secret labs are here, so there’re security guards hanging around that glance at him and his T-shirt with knit brows but were apparently expecting him since he isn't bothered. Kaito walks past busy-looking people in labcoats and stops at the last room with the lights turned off. A bored, basically-off-duty guard is leaning against the wall and scrolling through his Twitter feed while a jittery secretary is double- or triple-checking some paperwork. The guard barely notices him but the secretary provides a polite hello, and Kaito doesn’t register if he actually responds.

Kaito swipes himself in, shuts the door behind him, flips on the lights, and walks up to his dad’s desk.

It’s a neat contrast to Kaito’s own. The folders are all...well, folded; the papers all neat and signed; the calendar on the desk written on in chicken scratch but every meeting crossed out, every lab accounted for. There’s the usual pens and paper and highlighter and stapler and all that, but having never actually seen this side of the desk before, Kaito’s surprised when he sees the pictures.

There… are three of them. Kaito only recognizes one photo, but he’s intimately familiar with the people in all of them, and he takes it upon himself to be offended.

Kaito and Haruto in a valley far away from SoCal in a picture their mom took.

Dad holding a newborn Haruto in his arms.

Kaito and his mother before Haruto was even born. Kaito with puffy red cheeks and awkward picture-day hair, his mother with her full lips and her dimpled smile, the eyes with the stars in them. He can hear her voice in his head now, _you’ll look after him, won’t you, Niisan?_ , and he feels his heart ache and his blood betray him. He picks up the portrait and brushes aside the dust, and _god_ , how dare that man have this here? It’s… _no_ , she’s Kaito’s mother but she’s not his father's wife, and Kaito nearly smashes the frame right then and there.

But, you know, he’s never seen this one before... So he turns the frame over. Moves the nub aside and pulls out the picture, stares at it for a moment more.

Slips it into his back pocket. Something’s gotta pay for shipping and handling.

His task thus performed, the wallet delivered (mostly) in-tact, Kaito leaves his father’s office with only the key. Slides it down the secretary’s desk once he’s outside. He figures the guy is new and nervous enough that he won’t even touch it until his boss asks if Kaito stopped by.

“Don’t screw up,” Kaito advises.

He’s too preoccupied with the weight of the picture in his backpocket to really think of anything else on the way back to the elevator. This time as he waits, he pulls the picture out again, imagining the place where it must’ve been taken and how he must’ve felt at the time, too busy to think about anything else, to even consider the possibilities of being nervous or running into friends or not-friends in big, annoying buildings in a city an hour away from home.

So fate takes the opportunity to step in and onto his toes.

The elevator doors open, Kaito moves forward without looking up, and walks straight into Christopher Arclight.

“Sorry,” Chris is trying to say, before they both step back and Chris realizes at whom he’s looking. He smiles and doesn’t even have the decency to act surprised when he warmly says, “Kaito.”

“Bye,” says Kaito, who might consider staying to chat except that Chris's nose is still the same size and he's accompanied by two other men, one of whom Kaito recognizes and has no intention of talking to right now.

“Kite,” says his dad, surprised, and Kaito winces because _no_. “You came.”

“Can we not do this?”

His dad frowns, struggling to articulate something that’s been on his mind but has always had difficulty forming on his tongue. Chris looks like he’s about to step up to mediate between the two of them, but before he can the man that Kaito doesn’t recognize—a tall, muscular, Japanese-looking guy with the biggest grin Kaito’s ever seen and the cheeriest disposition Kaito’s ever wanted to escape—spreads out his arms and his smile.

“So you must be Kaito!” he says, getting up close, and Kaito backs away; he hasn’t had anyone so close in his personal space uninvited before, and he hasn’t heard anyone outside of Haruto pronounce his name exactly right in what feels like an eternity. Looking at him, it makes sense, of course, but it’s still… jarring? It’s not _bad_ , just… unexpected.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” the man continues.

“I have no idea who you are.”

The man laughs, and it’s not one of those nervous ones that he’s sure he’d get from Chris or Dad, but good-natured, like Kaito’s just told a really good joke. “Kazuma Tsukumo!” the man proclaims, proffering his hand. “I’m an archaeologist your dad is juuuust about to hire.” He winks at Faker, who gives him one of those ha-ha-you’re-so-funny grimace-smiles, and that makes Kaito snort. He shakes Kazuma’s hand, and realizing that he’s blocking their way out of the elevator, steps back to let the men out.

His dad takes the moment to ask, “Kaito, ah…”

“Secretary,” Kaito responds. His dad nods and shuffles in the other direction.

“Just a minute,” says Kazuma Tsukumo, when Faker beckons the others forward. Faker looks hesitant, but Kazuma waves his hand dismissively. "Oh, no worries, Doctor, Chris’ll show me the way when we’re done here.”

Chris nods. “Go on, sir."

Faker—looking kind of dumb, which Kaito can appreciate—turns and leaves. Kaito tries to make his escape, too, but Chris tugs on the back of his shirt to stop him, smiling pleasantly. The doors shut and the elevator heads back down, and Kaito scowls.

“What d’you want?”

Chris shakes his head, and Kazuma’s the one to speak. “I’m sorry to keep you, but Chris here is the one who told me about you.”

Kaito’s glare at Chris intensifies, because there are a lot of things that Chris knows about Kaito, and Chris talking about Kaito with strangers at the internship of which Kaito’s dad is in charge isn’t exactly what he likes to hear.

Kazuma pulls out his wallet and from it, a photo of his family—a woman, older; another, middle-aged, presumably Kazuma’s wife; a third, maybe’s Kaito’s age; and finally, a boy, with bright red eyes and even brighter pink hair. Kazuma points at him. “Forgive me, the photo’s a bit old, but I’m fond of it. This is my son, Yuma. He’s about to start his second year of high school.” Kazuma pauses there, and Kaito, who was starting to zone out, motions for him to go on with a nod. Kazuma’s pleased by that. “Kaito, Chris tells me you’re in Heartland Central?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Ah, that’s good… I’m glad. Yuma struggles to make friends sometimes, see, so I was afraid that he would be lonely. Heartland Central’s where he’s going next week, so I was hoping…” He trails off, all the while smiling, and Kaito wonders if Kazuma Tsukumo is ignoring Kaito’s dead-eye on purpose.

“Mr. Tsukumo,” Chris says quietly, and points over his shoulder. Kazuma follows Chris’s direction to see Faker looking out at them from his office. Kazuma laughs.

“Everyone here is impatient,” he says, shaking his head, and Chris supplies polite laughter. Then Kazuma turns back to Kaito and thanks him for his time, shakes his hand once more, and without waiting for Kaito to really say anything, without bothering to read his expression, he dashes off, Chris forgotten.

Kaito tries to make another escape. Three hundredth time is the charm, right?

Wrong.

“Kaito—”

“Shouldn’t you be guiding him or whatever?”

“It’s a straight line. Will you look at me?”

“What?” Kaito demands, turning on his heel and crossing his arms. He’s not in the mood for this; he remembered as soon as he saw Chris why they weren’t talking, and the silly fantastic loops his heart was doing earlier have disappeared entirely in the absence of daydreams.

Chris regards him. Kaito feels naked under his gaze, the gaze of his only friend, the only person he’s ever talked to about his problems, and the same person he hasn’t spoken to since. Chris has a way of making him feel very small, and it isn’t just his height.

“Cut it out,” Kaito mutters, suddenly very tired.

“You haven't changed at all,” Chris appraises, frowning.

“Mind your own business.”

“Come on,” says Chris, taking his hand. “I’ll treat you to lunch.”

“Don’t you have an internship to get to?”

“I’ll take my break.” Chris is firm. He squeezes Kaito’s hand and guides him away.

* * *

Lunch is a surprise. Kaito thought he’d end up being dragged to the same Starbucks as before, was considering making Chris buy him the most expensive café sandwich there, but instead Chris drags him through the lobby and out the door, to the city streets. Kaito wants to ask where they’re going, but that would mean speaking to him, and Kaito is dead-set on _not_ doing that, even if the wind feels nice and walking is refreshing, even if it’s nice to use his voice—he didn’t realize how much he hasn’t been using it lately. Has he even been talking to Haruto?

Chris doesn’t actually try to start up a conversation while they’re going, either, though, and they must look really weird walking like that, an angry kid in a Megaman tee and jeans that smell like cat poop and farts, a guy with a side-braid (Chris grew his hair out, did he) and a smile and a lab coat, like two people who just happen to be walking at the same exact pace in the same exact direction, instead of two friends.

Kaito first met Christopher Arclight just a year ago, on an adventure almost identical to this one. His dad left some important things at home, he needed them delivered, and Kaito was on his summer vacation. He and Haruto had come together that time; Haruto was ten years old, but he’s always been small for his age, and he clung to Kaito’s hand with his little pale palm, and they ran into Chris somewhere along their delivery, Kaito doesn’t really remember in detail. His first memory is hazy; Chris’s face looked longer and his hair was shorter when Kaito first saw him, his look more appraising as he glanced down at Kaito and Haruto with his height advantage, but there was something about Chris even then, and once Kaito dropped off Faker’s whatever-it-was, Chris was the one who told Kaito how to get to the infamous ice cream stand that Haruto’d heard about in school—and then volunteered to take them there.

They’re probably not going to that ice cream place right now. 

There’s something faint that starts up in Kaito’s head after the first block, and by the second he starts to get dizzy, and he was already tired enough, so he’s crankier now, but he tries to keep his voice calm when he demands, “And where exactly are we going?”

“He speaks!” wonders Chris, but his joke doesn’t go over well and when he sees Kaito’s face he frowns, playing around forgotten. “Right there,” he says then, pointing at a multi-colored store with a neon sign… that’s advertising frozen yogurt.

Kaito is surprised, but he goes in without a word. Chris follows.

Inside, he grabs a cup, fills it to the brim, and has it weighed. “He’ll pay,” he says, shrugging in Chris’s direction, then he picks up the ice cream and chocolate filled heart attack, sets it on a table, and digs in like he hasn’t had food all day (which he hasn’t, and his body is reminding him, and this probably isn’t a good idea, but Kaito thinks he deserves this).

Chris comes to join him a minute later. “Sorry,” he says, but Kaito’s not sure what exactly for, so he doesn’t acknowledge it.

“I’m surprised you of all people brought me here,” Kaito mutters.

“I figured you wouldn’t have gone in a while.”

“No,” agrees Kaito, he hasn’t.

“Have you gone anywhere?”

Kaito wants to tell him it’s none of his business again, but he slumps onto the table instead, plays with his spoon. He filled his cup to the brim, but he’s not all that hungry anymore, and he’s not looking forward to the bus ride back, kinda wishes he could just sleep here and wake up at home.

“Kaito?”

“No,” he mumbles. “Stop asking.”

Chris doesn’t. “Kaito…”

“When _your_ body’s decided to make something about your little brother about _you_ , when you can’t live on a daily basis and either feel like you wanna die all the time or need to piss every five seconds, come back and talk to me.”

...is what he wants to say. Instead…

“Chris,” he looks at him imploringly, and finally Chris nods.

“I get it. I’ll drop it.”

Kaito wonders if he does, but doesn’t say as much, and Chris smiles again, and it’s really annoying that he does that, because Kaito would prefer that people get angry at him so that he has a legitimate reason to be angry back and not feel bad about it later.

“Stop being nice to me.”

“Can I ask you something?”

Kaito groans, and Chris takes that as a ‘yes.’ “Why didn’t you want to come up here? Do you hate your dad that much?”

He wonders vaguely what time it is, wonders again what Haruto’s doing right now, what jokes Gauche is telling, if Droite is back yet and if they’re all having fun. Wonders if Gauche will take them all out somewhere, like he offered to do last summer whenever a movie was out and Droite had work or didn’t want to see the remake of _the Karate Kid_ , thank you. Wonders if Haruto will say yes because _Niisan doesn’t do anything_ , Kaito doesn’t go anywhere or ever have fun, just lies around the house being moody all day, and it’s just… 

Kaito doesn’t want to have fun. He doesn’t… well. “It’s… not that. I don’t _want_ to do anything.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. Ever.” He slumps in his chair again. The yogurt and ice cream and M &Ms have all melted by now, making a multi-colored mixture on the bottom of the cup that looks weird but probably tastes fantastic. Kaito pushes the cup away, pushes his chair back, and says, “I’ll see you around.”

Chris gets out of his own chair. “You will?”

Kaito, who wasn’t really paying attention to his phrasing, hesitates, and Chris shakes his head like, _yeah, I didn’t think so_. 

“Well, at least answer my texts every now and then. And try to think about what I said?”

What he said when? Just now? Three weeks ago? Last year?

“Don’t tell me what to do.”


	3. Awesome & Cool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> posted: 29 december 2013  
> edited : 1 july 2016  
> —
> 
> SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2011.

On Sunday, Kaito figures he should probably find out when school starts, or at least if there was an apocalypse scheduled, because he wakes up to an empty house, and if there was a mass human death or something he feels cheated being left alive.

He finally bothers with the time, at least; squinting at the analog on his wall tells him it's noon. Groaning, he throws off his sheets, stumbles downstairs still in his boxers and, rubbing at his eyes, weighs the pros and cons of having cereal or exerting the effort necessary for scrambled eggs.

Cereal wins over in the end. He pours out the bowl before discovering the lack of milk.

He hates _everything_. He slams the fridge door shut and notices that there's a new message on their dry-erase board; Haruto and Dad, it informs him, have gone shopping for school supplies, and Kaito should call if he needs something. Kaito erases the message with more force than necessary and writes out in big, bold letters: **MILK**.

He eats the cereal dry and skims through the newspaper that’s set on the kitchen counter. He finally finds out the date, too. It’s the twenty-eighth, and according to the article about the decreasing SAT grades of his generation and how they’re all too addicted to digital technology, Heartland Central is commencing on the seventh of September, a Wednesday, which is lame because he likes it better when the first week of school starts on a Thursday. Shorter that way. Less painful.

Does he miss school or not? Mostly he just wants something to do.

He washes the bowl and sets it to dry, washes his dad’s and Haruto’s bowls from earlier that morning, too, because they just left them there, no doubt planning to do them later but hoping that Kaito would get there first.

Keys jingle in the lock just as he's finishing. Dad opens the door and Haruto limps inside, yelling at someone behind him, a stranger who follows with fives bags of groceries, puts them on the counter (one has milk), and promptly sees Kaito in his underwear.

“Niisan!" Haruto grins. "Look who we saw at Target!"

"Uh…"

Kaito… has no idea who this is.

Oh, wait.

It's the same dark hair and pink highlights and Asian features from the picture yesterday, only taller. Kazuma Tsukumo's son has a face so absurdly bright that it's blinding—his cheeks are round and red with baby fat, his teeth white like a Colgate commercial, and when he grins at Kaito it's like they've known each other for years, like Kaito is his best friend. Like this is normal, something that used to happen every other day but went on a brief hiatus, so it's nice for it to happen again: this stranger seeing Kaito in his underwear with a washed bowl of cereal and a scowl.

"Hi!" he says, and laughs in a way that Kaito can only describe as shonen, wipes at his nose with the back of his hand before offering it out for a shake.

"This is Yuma," says Haruto. "He said he knew you!"

“Oh,” says Kaito, not really hearing him because he's too aware of the tiny spaceships on his underwear and the yellow-and-green bird’s nest that can loosely be referred to as his hair. “Hold up, I’ll be right back.”

Haruto and Yuma nod, Dad comes in with some more bags, and Kaito heads upstairs. Pulls on the first pair of pants he can extract from the floor and the same tee from yesterday, stares in the mirror with narrow eyes, and wipes a hand through his hair. Decides that it’s passable for a Sunday morning, and honestly who is this kid anyway.

When he gets back down he finds Haruto and Yuma huddled around the kitchen table, the contents of a Target bag spilled onto the surface to reveal a secret: two rectangular tins of which Kaito recognizes the style. He walks over and picks one up as casually as he can.

He asks despite the logo, “Are these… Duel Monsters?”

“Yup!” Haruto says, gleefully pulling one open. “Yuma plays! I asked Dad if we could go look at the trading cards and we ran into him there.”

"Yeah?" Kaito flips the tin over. It's embossed with text advertising the cards inside; this one promises two ultimate rares and one new, all-important godly card that has yet to appear in the anime. He traces the ridges in the cover art and smiles faintly, a ghost of something he once cared about. He hasn't played DM in years, but feigned excitement is enough to placate Haruto, and just enough to stifle the small part of Kaito that suddenly wonders if he still has Galaxy Wizard or if he gave it to Mizael.

“Kaito, Kaito, Haruto told me you play,” says Yuma, as Kaito sets the tin down. "Do you still have your deck?"

Like Kazuma, Yuma says Kaito's name as it was meant to be said. And if his dad’s atmosphere was so cheery Kaito wanted to escape, Yuma is like the sun and Kaito is at risk of radiation poisoning. 

Incidentally, he has an accent. It's not something Kaito can place—not typically Japanese, not from SoCal or Texas or anywhere else concrete—but by now he's said enough that Kaito knows it's there, that Yuma pronounces each word in a different dialect, stressing his syllables almost at random, depending on where he picked them up.

" _Used_ to play," Kaito corrects. Then he asks before he realizes his mouth's moving, “Hey, issei, right?”

Yuma tilts his head like it's a question he's never thought to answer before. “I... guess. Why?"

“Never mind,” says Kaito, and this time reaches for a booster pack.

But Yuma, he quickly discovers, isn’t one to _never mind_ anything. He sits up in his chair and gets closer into Kaito’s space, tilting his head even further with an exaggerated frown. “Hey, that’s not fair. I answered your question, so now you have to answer mine!”

Kaito sneers. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen,” Yuma answers swiftly. Then his eyes widen. “Hey! That’s two to zero!”

Kaito pulls open the booster and looks through the cards. Five traps. All useless.

Yuma pokes him. "Hey, Kaito, are you really Japanese?"

His grip on the cards tightens. "Does Kaito Tenjo sound like something else?"

"No no no, Touchan told me you're half, it's just that since you don't really look like most Japanese I wouldn't have guessed otherwise, you know?"

Kaito does in fact have working eyes, thank you very much, but then Yuma mimics the shape of Kaito's hair with his hands and Haruto laughs and Kaito's annoyance subsides a little—fine, this is infinitely better than Chris's brother pulling at his eyes to widen them, but it's not like Yuma has room to talk.

"Whoa, I was kinda scared there. You know, your name is awesome, so I was afraid you'd be too cool to talk to or something, but now that I know you play DM, we're definitely gonna be friends. I haven't really had someone to talk to about Duel Monsters since Japan, I usually end up playing the CPU on my DS and—"

"Whoa, okay, slow down." Kaito drops into the seat across from them, and Yuma grins a sheepish, "Sorry." Though more lively and rhythmic than Kaito is used to, Yuma reminds him of Haruto; it's something in his eyes, an untouched purity, a sweetness. He's just at the border of endearing before it becomes annoying.

This is what Kazuma wanted, right? A friend? Even if Kaito never actually agreed?

"Hey, Yuma," Haruto says then, "do you have any brothers or sisters?"

"Oh, Neechan is in Japan." He rolls his eyes. "She went back for university because she missed her friends or something."

"So you moved here?"

"We're always moving around! Touchan and Kaachan are both like that. They don't stay in one place too long, so usually Kaachan just homeschools me. But my dad said that your dad really needs his help, so he thinks I can actually go to school for once and make friends."

"But don't you ever get lonely?" Haruto has his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands; Yuma fascinates him.

Yuma shrugs. Optimistic is too weak a word for him. "Well, moping's not gonna help. And I've got you guys now."

Haruto nods sagely, like that's something he understands. He shifts slightly in his chair, then pulls one DM pack toward himself and pushes another toward Yuma. They open their respective foils in tense anticipation, except that Yuma's bouncing on the pillow of his seat.

A precise tear, and then Yuma's eyes light up.

"Yes! Another one!"

Haruto leans over to look. Yuma turns the card to face him, then sets it on the table to pull out his wallet, from which he produces another card—identical, except that the text is in Japanese.

Number 39: Utopia. No. 39 希望皇ホープ.

Yuma explains proudly, "I collect Hopes."

Huh. Kaito huffs, something between mundane amusement and surprise. "Hang on," he says, and pushes back his chair, heads upstairs to his room. Pulls open the drawer of his nightstand, the only spot in his room he's bothered to maintain all year, and carefully extracts the laminated paperboard.

His heart sort of hurts when he looks at it, a tug that feels like loneliness. Just as it was when he first ever saw it, the silver letters and the soft colors, the art that shines 3D. God, he—he—well, never mind.

He presses his lips to it one last time. Heads back downstairs, his footsteps louder and faster to escort his heartbeat.

Both hands gripping onto its edges, he shoves it out to Yuma horizontally. Yuma is quizzical and Haruto is watching and Kaito can't meet his eyes, but he nods at Yuma, _go on, take it_ , so Yuma does.

“Kaito,” says Yuma, “you run Photons?”

“Ran,” Kaito corrects. And Photon/Galaxy. “I don’t play anymore.”

“This is a ghost rare,” Yuma tells him, as if he doesn’t know. "From the OCG."

“You can have it,” Kaito says, like it's not a big deal at all, like it’s meaningless, like it’s something he was going to throw away anyway, one teen’s trash is another’s treasure, right? “I was thinking about selling it.”

“Really?” Yuma shakes his head, pushing it back at Kaito. “No way, I can’t. At least let me win it in a duel or something.”

“Dude,” says Kaito, and now he’s getting frustrated. “I’m going to lose anyway. I haven’t played in years. Take it.”

“Well… okay. But! Only if you'll sit with me at lunch once school starts." He holds it delicately between two fingers, slides it into a new card sleeve. “And you'll have to duel me if you ever want him back!"


	4. Kay-Toe & Rye-Oh-Guh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> posted: 04 january 2014  
> edited : 16 july 2016  
> —
> 
> WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2011.

The first day of school, Kaito is late.

Haruto shakes him up about half an hour before school starts, yelling something about how he's changing Kaito's bedtime if he doesn't get up _right now_ , "God, you're so _embarrasing_."

Kaito groans and sits up, rubbing at his eyes. Haruto tells him he has thirty minutes to get ready and get to class.

He collapses back in bed.

"Niisan, I did _not_ climb up here for you to go back to sleep," Haruto says, tugging at the covers. A pang of guilt makes Kaito at least open his eyes. 

"What if I just don't go?" he wonders, staring at the ceiling and the faint outline of the stars clinging to it. He can't believe how old he was when Faker put them up, how he's still too attached to take them down.

Haruto is pulling the curtains aside in the hopes of showering Kaito in evil sunlight and maybe injecting some light into his soul in the process. "Niisan, it's your last year."

"But what if—"

"Kaito," Haruto says this time, and it's firm and enough; Kaito winces, sits up, and blinks around the room, half-heartedly trying to hone in on some pants. Meanwhile Haruto motions for Kaito's hand, which is dutifully offered and then prodded with a lancet. Kaito swears the kid just likes to play doctor-doctor; Haruto's tongue sticks out as he sticks a test strip into the glucometer, then brings it to the blood on Kaito's finger.

"You promised Yuma," Haruto reminds him as they wait for the result, "and a promise to Yuma is a promise to me."

How Haruto and Yuma got so close in just a week, Kaito's not sure he fully understands. It has something to do with Duel Monsters, though; Yuma's come over basically every day this past week, and there’ve been anime marathons and card game marathons and Kaito's never seen Haruto so openly _happy_ before. It's nice, with the potential to make him jealous.

Haruto checks the glucometer's screen. Nodding importantly, he turns it to Kaito, who rolls his eyes and translates the result. "It's good."

“It’s good!” Haruto proclaims in his best adult voice, and pulls Kaito out from bed, pushes him toward a pile of laundry. “That means you don’t have any excuses.”

“Yeah, yeah,” says Kaito, and ushers Haruto out the door when he hears the bus coming down the street.

“Don’t forget about lunch! You promised!”

And… well, he supposes he did. 

* * *

Yeah, he's late to homeroom. Which would be okay if he were a freshman and wouldn't be okay if he were a junior, but you know what, he's a senior now, it's really not even mandatory for him to show up. Anyway, his homeroom teacher is the old Robotics advisor, which means that Kaito is at least spared from a look of disapproval when he drags himself to the last seat in the back of the classroom (which is out of alphabetical order, but so is Kaito’s life).

A print-out of his schedule re-informs Kaito of all the classes he's taking, which include: a combination of prep courses he failed to reach the honors requirement for last year; Bio, the only AP he qualified for, because Bio is a joke of a science; Senior Health, which is helpfully subtitled _Lessons for Life_ ; and a couple engineering and computer electives that he ticked off because they're the least boring.

He'd have taken Physics again if he could, but he didn't meet the AP req. Whoops. 

It's only when he notes that he has fourth period lunch that he realizes he doesn't know when Yuma's lunch is or how to find him in a school like Heartland Central, and then it starts to hit him that this boring day of reading syllabi and going through useless icebreakers is probably going to be a waste of time and he could've lied to Haruto and taken a nap at the park or something.

("Say your name and something you like to do that starts with the same letter! Kaito, you first." "Kaito, k-sleep. Hey, Cathy, remember that time you got suspended in seventh grade for scratching a kid that told you you weren't actually a cat?")

Things get better third period: at his locker he realizes that he forgot his wallet and his keys and the glucometer and also to have breakfast, and to pack his actual human lunch and also probably his brain and wow okay he's dizzy.

One hand holding his forehead, Kaito bangs his locker shut and groans and wonders if he can steal something from someone or maybe just die on the spot. His backpack slides off his shoulder and drops to the floor, which is great because he hadn't zipped it yet and his stuff all falls out and—wait, what, he doesn't remember putting that in there, a brown paper bag he hadn't noticed this morning, and it's—it's…

It's got his name on it. In a tiny, messy script that he recognizes, _Kaito_.

It's... a bag of caramel?

Small square cubes, individually wrapped. Their secret.

God.

There's a letter in the bag, too. It's a copy of Yuma's schedule, with the words _I forgot to give this to you. Good luck, Niisan!_ squished unaligned into the margins, because Haruto is kind of the best, and Kaito can't believe he even considered lying to him.

He could cry. He hopes no one saw his meltdown, hopes that no one sees him sheepishly pick his stuff up again and put it in his backpack and chew quietly on pieces of caramel, one reparatory drop after the other, and he—ah, crap, late bell. 

* * *

Lunch finally comes and Kaito is (1) hungry enough to devour an entire cow, and (2) broke enough to have to go and live with one.

It's not the first time he's forgotten his wallet or gone hungry, but it's never actually been about his health before, an arresting dizziness that settles at the forefront of his being and nags like a fly at a window. Maybe he can find some lost change around the vending machine…

Or, wait.

Freshmen always sit in the main cafeteria for the first weeks of classes, so Kaito knows where to go. It's easy to recognize Yuma in the crowd; his hair is still just as pink and blue and spiky as it was the last time Kaito saw him, his grin just as wide. Seeing him animated makes Kaito feel kind of guilty at wanting to steal food from him, though, so he revisits the vending machine plan, pops another caramel and ducks behind a table—before slamming his head on it when he sees that Yuma's actually sitting with someone already.

The varsity jacket on his back spells out KAMISHIRO in bright yellow on navy blue—the ridiculous combination of colors their school calls a scheme, but that the kid across from Yuma doesn't seem to mind. With his spiked purple hair and deep purple jeans, Shark Kamishiro is sitting with one hand stuffed in his front pocket and the other on his phone, nodding along to whatever Yuma's saying, not really paying attention, and of course, Kaito realizes, Yuma _would_.

Shark Kamishiro moved to Heartland Central from the prestigious Barian Academy after some fiasco in the last few months of Kaito's junior year, an ordeal about which he only knows because there were two weeks in April where the only subject of conversation was HC's now-resident delinquent and ex-star athlete. Shark was a power forward, or a quarterback, or something else important in whatever sport people cared about at the time; Kaito wasn't paying attention, just sort of picked it up from people gossipping in gym. For all he knew, Shark could've been an extreme cheerleader. An extreme, varsity cheerleader.

Yeah, okay.

So if Yuma's got a lunch companion already, caught himself a shark and all that, Kaito's off the hook, right?

...Why is he kind of disappointed?

Kaito rubs at his head. Yuma's voice is loud even with the lunchroom clamor, like everyone else is ducking their heads and lowering their volume to let Yuma through unchallenged. Kaito checks the vending machines and finds nothing; considers making his escape to the Robotics room like he would sometimes the last three years, maybe take that nap now that the caramel's at least got him in the safe zone…

"Oh, hey, I see Kaito! KAITO!"

Or.

The entire cafeteria goes silent for a second and everyone turns their heads to _him_ as Yuma waves enthusiastically, and it's almost like Kazuma Tsukumo, waving good-bye from Faker's office, and there's Haruto in his head again, _you promised, and a promise to Yuma is a promise to me_ , and then another, smaller voice in his head, tiny and wavering and quiet, _promise to the stars_?

Kids take this promising shit too seriously. But he did give Yuma Galaxy-Eyes, after all.

Kaito walks over stiffly and the cafeteria returns to its regular rhythm; if there's a whisper of _Tenjo?_ or _Kite-o_ then he's ignoring it. Kaito is on Shark's side, opposite Yuma. He doesn't sit down, just puts one hand up and says, "Hi."

"Hi!" Yuma says back, and what the hell, he has an actual lunch, what's basically full-on bento, rice and teriyaki and anpan. Kaito would expect, like, Lunchables or Kid Cuisine or a box of chicken nuggets and french fries or something and _dammit he is so hungry_.

"You didn't buy your lunch yet?"

Ha ha. Lunch. Buying. Money.

“No,” says Kaito, and eyes Shark, whose shoulders are slumped because what is posture, and his hands and eyes are still glued to his phone as he scrolls aimlessly through a timeline of promoted Tweets. He hasn’t looked up.

“Why don’t you put your things down and—?”

“Yeah, sure,” says Kaito distractedly, then puts his stuff down and sits.

Yuma stares at him.

“Um, what?”

“...You’re not gonna get anything?”

“Oh,” says Kaito. "No.”

“Why not?”

“Not hungry.”

“What? No way!” Yuma shakes his head so vigorously it's like he’s in a cartoon, and Kaito gets dizzier just watching him. “I’m _always_ hungry! Aren't you, Ryoga?" He nudges Shark under the table.

"...Ryoga?" asks Kaito.

Shark Kamishiro finally looks at him, a glare that says plainly, _No._

But Kaito, who laughed the first time he heard someone say "Shark Kamishiro", and upon hearing it a second time went, "Wait, you're serious?", smirks.

"Ryoga," he tries. "Kamishiro Ryoga. Everything makes sense now."

Kaito's never spoken to Shark before; it's literally because he just isn't at Kaito's level. When Shark first transferred, everyone was talking about how he skipped a grade because he's from Barian and how and his sister are both rich hot athletes, but Shark wasn't exactly an Honors kid. Even coming from private school, Shark Kamishiro was dumped into 11th grade college prep for all his classes, so Kaito never saw him.

He's heard that this year, Shark's sister is transferring, too. There were jokes about how her name must be Dolphin or Shakira, but. Now it makes sense.

Sort of. Who calls himself _Shark_?

"Who the hell are you?" Shark asks now, because to him Kaito probably just looks and sounds like a weeb.

"It's Kaito!" Yuma says. "He's the guy I was telling you about, weren't you listening?"

Kaito doesn't have the heart to tell Yuma how obvious it was that Shark wasn't. "And how exactly did you rope _Ryoga_ here into joining you, Yuma?"

"We have Physics together! Ryoga was all the way in the front and I was all the way in the back but neither of us had lab partners so I asked him and now we sit together."

Shark winces at every single mention of his actual name. Kaito wonders with a moment's guilt if there's something about it that Shark doesn't particularly like, but since he hasn't actually told them to stop, Kaito doesn't plan on it. Whether or not they’ve spoken before, Shark strikes Kaito as… well, kind of an idiot. Or an acceptable target.

Kaito doesn’t like him, at least.

“Oh, right, _Ryoga_ must have to make up the junior requirements for HC, huh?”

"Why're you saying his name like that?" Yuma asks, frowning and tilting his head. He means the way Kaito is smirking when he says it, like it's an inside joke despite their non-acquaintanceship.

"No one calls me that," Shark mutters, glancing demurely at his feed again, where Kaito catches a glimpse of the display name _Nasch_ before Shark quits the app.

Huh?

"Really? What do they call you?"

"Shark.”

Kaito rests his head on the table, letting the two converse on his own. Mocking Shark was a good temporary distraction, but now it's hard to turn his focus away from anything but his head and his stomach. He’s run out of caramel.

"Whoooooa! Shark?! That's such a cool nickname, why do they call you that?"

"Because they just do." A moment’s pause before Kaito hears him mutter, "...I guess _you_ don't have to, if you don't want."

Kaito snorts, wondering if Shark just likes the way Yuma says _Ryo-u-ga_.

"What about Kaito?"

"What?" Kaito sits up again, tearing his gaze away from Takashi's fries a table down; he'd been trying to make them obey a telepathic command to fly into his mouth.

"What do _you_ call Ryoga?"

"I don't know him."

"You do now!" Yuma insists, and from across the table he tries to put one arm around each of them and fails spectacularly when both of them draw back. It doesn’t hinder his glee. "We're all friends!"

"Yuma, we've known each other for, like, five minutes."

"Well, yeah," says Yuma, "but Ryoga duels, and I duel, and so do you."

"Used to," Kaito and Shark say at the same time, and then stare at each other, disgusted. Yeah, he definitely doesn’t like this guy.

"See? Talking like each other already. Friends.” Yuma smiles and sits back down to continue attacking his bento. When Kaito and Shark are still unimpressed, he says with his mouth full of chicken and rice, “You promised, Kaito!"

"Kaito," says Shark, like something’s just clicked in his head. "Aren't you that guy who took like ten thousand APs and failed all of them?"

"Aren't you that guy who got arrested and kicked out of Barian and landed in public school Pre-Algebra?"

They size each other up.

"Oh, good," says Yuma. "So you do know each other."

* * *

Yuma doesn't finish his lunch and is probably literally an angel, because he offers Kaito what's left of it. The bell rings just as Kaito—to Shark's judgemental sneering—sweeps it clean with a spork, and, with uncharacteristic energy, thanks Yuma for being all that is good in the world. Having packed up Shark points Yuma in the direction of his next class, and the three of them head their separate ways—except that Shark and Kaito end up going in the same way, at the same pace, and Shark kind of grunts and Kaito also grunts and then they’re going up the same stairs, toward the gym, into the same classroom—

“...We have Health together,” Shark surmises, then glares at him, like Kaito is the cancer that killed his great-grandmother on his birthday ten years ago or something. Then he stomps to the last seat in the last row of the classroom, pulls out these gigantic purple BOSE from his backpack, and jams to some music while staring out the window like an anime protagonist.

Kaito rolls his eyes, but also feels kind of anxious because um excuse me that was where _he_ planned on sitting year round, and now he’s forced to settle in the last seat in the _first_ row; the only way they can be farther apart is if Kaito sits in the first seat of the first row, which, ahaha, no, and he hopes that the teacher won’t assign seats, but if they do, that Kaito will be the fortunate T in a class with no U-Zs. It’s happened before, okay, so here’s hoping.

They’re alone in the room for a few seconds before the other kids start to trickle in, some with their friends and other with their phones, and Kaito… stares at his hands. Last year, he probably used this time to read; his homework was finished in the library after school, so he always had a book with him for boring classes and for lunch, but he hasn’t been reading lately so he doesn’t have a book, doesn’t even have a notebook to doodle in while he waits, and it’s the first day so it’s extra boring and he looks at Shark again, Shark with the BOSE and the iPhone and Kaito doesn’t even know where his Zune is, either. Probably swallowed by the same monster that ate his phone and the fan remote.

He yawns, pillowing his head with his arms on the desk. However long later he's shaken awake by someone handing him the syllabus, _Welcome to Health 401, kids, in this class we’ll be talking about your Future_. Kaito’s head hits the desk again, an audible thud that people turn to look at him for, and then the teacher—Mr. Crossit, he introduces himself—makes it worse by telling them that, yeah, hey, assigned seats.

There are groans from every student, desk, and chair as they pick up their things and move to stand along the wall. Crossit, satisfied by their dissatisfaction, calls out names and points to desks.

Kaito mentally crosses his fingers. _Anywhere but the front._

It turns out that they are not in entirely alphabetical order because Crossit tried to go boy-girl-boy-girl, as though they're in third grade and cooties will prevent them from chatting with their neighbors. Kaito's happy enough with the arrangement, because it means there's no way he'll end up next to Shark; also, Shark's surname blessedly starts with a K, which will end up in the relative center of the room. Kaito figures Shark won't like that, so he's content.

That is, of course, until both Kay-toe Ten-joe and Ry-Oh-Just-Call-Me-Shark Cami-she-row somehow find themselves in the center of the room, next to girls, yes, but also next to each other.

"Well, it's not perfect, but it'll have to do," Crossit says as the students, now seated, scope out their locations for potential sources of misery. "We _will_ be moving seats again. We do a lot of group work in this class, so you will be seated with your various groups as the year goes on."

A hand immediately shoots up into the air. "Yes," Crossit says before they can ask, "you _will_ be doing the baby project. And yes, you'll be doing it in pairs."

Kaito's head snaps up at the same time as Shark's.

"Can we work alone?"

People snort. Kaito and Shark glare at each other, and Shark scoots his desk a bit away.

"No," says Crossit firmly, then smiles in a sweet, kind of malicious way that reminds Kaito of Chris, and says what makes Kaito decide that he hates him: "But you _can_ work together."

_What._

"Perhaps a joke,” he says then, waving at them dismissively, and then he elaborates through clean teeth. “Yes, you will be assigned pairs, but we won't be getting our babies for months, so there's no need to be concerned just yet. Anyway..." He takes some papers from his desk and passes them out, moving on to discuss the structure of their class and where to hide in case of a lockdown and all that, and Kaito glares at Shark, and Shark glares at Kaito, and, you know, Kaito doesn't even care about the grade.

Shark was probably kicked out of Barian Academy for being too stupid. He spits, "I am _not_ working with you."

"You bet your ass you aren’t."

"Checking out my ass, _Kay-toe_?"

"What's there to check out, _Rye-oh-guh_?"

And so the year begins.


	5. Numbers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> posted: 21 january 2014  
> edited : 04 january 2017  
> —
> 
> MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 - MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2011.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Crossit has the face and name of [this guy](http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Donovan_Crossit) but the personality of Ukyo-sensei. Habara is Umimi from Anna's tag duel.

School carries on, and Kaito remembers why he missed it.

What exactly was wrong with him?

It wasn't the education or the company that he liked—it was just something to occupy him. Something that he _had_ to do, that got him off his butt and forced him to think about anything but how miserable he is. Last year, Kaito never left things hanging; he got things done and filed them away, ready to run through another chapter of _Advance Wars_. But now he's got so much work and so little desire to do it that he comes home, drops his stuff at the door, and conks out until Haruto shakes him awake. Then he watches TV, makes as little a dinner as possible, and pretty much does anything but look at his assignments.

No one likes schoolwork. That's just a fact of life. But before, Kaito didn't complain. It was all easy and manageable and completed; every day after school, he would sit in the campus library or bike to the public one for an hour or so to free up the afternoon. Then he'd move to the comics section to browse for anything new he'd like or he'd let Haruto read. Finally he would head to Haruto's bus stop so they could walk home together, sometimes Haruto trying to ride Kaito's bike and failing because his legs were too short, others Kaito pulling it along behind them.

Things were different then. Haruto was in elementary school, so his stop was farther away and school ended later. And then—

May happened. June was worse. July, August.

Kaito fucked up. The more he fucks up, the less he cares.

* * *

On the sliding scale of apathy vs ego: not studying because fuck it vs. needing to be The Best for self-validation. Two weeks into the school year, the day Shark Kamishiro transfers into his English class, Kaito doesn't notice because he is too busy speed-reading the third act of _Hamlet_ lest the rumor of a pop quiz come to bite him in the ass.

To be fair, he's been lulled into a false sense of security. Shark's twin sister Not-Dolphin is in the seat next to him; Kaito's head flipped up the first day, when Mrs. Habara called out Kamishiro Comma Ri...o. Just Rio. She has the same hair color and self-satisfied smirk as her brother, but hers is less insufferable, potentially because Kaito doesn't have to deal with her at lunch or in Senior Health.

Plot twist.

"You can call me Shark," Kaito hears, and startled he looks up to see the asshole glaring at their teacher, telling her and her Asian-ass name that his name is Shark, thanks. Habara smiles something plastic, then asks him to pass out their pop quiz since he's up. Shark does; and after he gets to Kaito last, Shark slides into the seat behind Rio, meets Kaito's eyes, and smirks.

Wow.

Danish mid-life crises forgotten, Kaito tears out some paper from his notebook.

It took you two weeks to convince guidance you can read?  
  
---  
  
Then he scrunches it up into a ball and throws it at Shark's head. Shark scowls, hissing, "Dude, what the hell?"

Kaito mimes reaching down and opening the note. It's a pretty basic concept.

Shark follows his lead. The shade of red he turns is brighter than Kaito could hope; Shark is _way_ too easy.

Glancing up to gauge Habara's location, Shark quickly scribbles his response. With perfect aim, he gets Kaito back in the eye.

301-495-2101  
  
---  
  
To which Kaito responds, 

Don't get your hopes up. That wasn't flirting.  
  
---  
  
Shark rolls his eyes, pulling out his phone to type, 21st century much?, and then because he can't let anything go, who'd want you anyway, to which Kaito just shrugs his whatever, dumbass. Shark turns back to his quiz and makes to slip his cell into his pocket unphased, except that Habara is making the rounds now and sees it in his hand.

"Shark," she says, "it really would not be fair of you to keep the answers to yourself once you've gone to the trouble of looking them up. Would you be so kind as to share with the class?"

Turns out Shark isn't that good under pressure. He manages to get out, "Ah, no, I wasn't—Kaito, he—" before Habara marches up to him, yanks the phone for herself, and, given no sign of actual cheating, deals her usual punishment: reading aloud his most recent messages. Which happen to be with Yuma. 

"'meet you after class?' 'ok! T-Y-S-M, your'—oh, dear, that should be a contraction—'the best, partner heart-emoji X-D'."

Shark, fittingly, sinks in his chair.

When the bell rings, Kaito hightails it outta there before Shark can collect his phone and come after him. It's been nearly an hour of Hamlet wangsting about his substantial inability to do anything but Ophelia, but Kaito's in higher spirits than he ever expected to be, and all credit goes to Shark Kamishiro.

Kaito's not entirely sure what to call their relationship.

For the past week, he's sat with Yuma—and, by extension, Shark—for lunch, just as he promised. On Thursday he brought a book with him, since he still didn't and doesn't know where his phone or his Zune are, but as per custom he didn't enjoy the first page and couldn't focus because Yuma was talking loudly about how exciting tomorrow's lab will be and if Shark thought they might dissect something ("We're not gonna dissect anything, Yuma," "You're just scared!" "It's _Physics_ ").

It was the same on Friday: Yuma and his two companions, more lunch partners and schoolmates than actual friends, the assortment of kids that sit together because they've no one else to sit with… or, well, that's how Kaito _wants_ to describe it, but there's something about Yuma that doesn't make the concept sit right. Yuma is warm and lively and talks like the three of them have known each other for their entire lives, asks after Haruto (he's fine) and Rio (she's Rio), asks if Kaito really promised Haruto they could name their hypothetical dog Starliege (he did). And, of course, every single day, Yuma asks if Kaito and Shark brought their decks (they didn't).

But that is all Yuma. Kaito and Shark haven't exactly warmed up to _each other_. In Health, their… center… of the room is dark and charged with animosity, even as Shark taps his pencil on his knee to the beat of a tune Kaito vaguely recognizes, as Kaito doodles aimlessly in his notebook. And despite them both projecting as much Don't-Talk-To-Me-For-I-Am-A-Troubled-Teen as possible, the teacher calls on them all the same.

"Kaito," Crossit quizzes one day as the semester rolls on, "what's the only surefire way to prevent STI transmission?"

"Just be Kaito," comes the snark from Shark's direction, before Kaito immediately bites back, "Get eaten out by a shark."

For his cheek Kaito earns a chorus of _oooooh_ s from the class and Shark shooting up in his chair. “You wanna _go_ , asshole?”

Shark is taller than him anyway, so Kaito just drawls from his chair, “For ice cream? We just had lunch.”

And that is how Crossit ends up restraining Shark while Kaito glares, daring Shark to hit him right here, right now. And that is how the two of them are asked to stay after class so they can chat about their 'community grade' ("I don't like the term 'participation,'" Crossit clarifies), how their Health/Lessons-For-Life/End-Me-Now teacher smiles that pleasant smile that only comes with practice and with teachers, how Crossit comes to inform them that he is often considered a kind teacher, but that is aim is to be an _effective_ instructor, and that he considers Kay-toe and Rye-oh-guh a personal investment: "It's _my_ goal to make both of _you_ successful."

Kaito snorts. "Good luck."

Crossit is not impressed. "Kay-toe," he says, to which Shark snorts, and Crossit gives him another Stern Teacher Look, "if this behavior between you two continues, I'll have to deduct points. In fact, neither of you have done any homework assignments so far or contributed to your community grade. That leaves a significant hole in your report card. What are you going to do when you get to college?"

Not go? Kaito's not entirely sure that what he wanted is what he wanted, not entirely sure that he's motivated enough to be an actual human person. Forget thinking about college or about life or about anything, really; Kaito was thinking about taking a gap year. Or three.

Neither of them respond. Crossit nods. "Well, if either of you want to pass this class, I'm going to have to ask that you work together." Then he adds, in case the concept is foreign: "Coöperate."

"That'll happen," Kaito mutters, and that's when the late bell rings, so Crossit sighs and signs them late passes—for which Kaito doesn't bother waiting.

"Hold up!" Shark catches up in the hallway with the slip of yellow paper. "Hey, I actually maybe want to pass this class."

"You? Really?"

"Uh, yeah?"

"Sucks," says Kaito, shrugging the weight of his bag from one shoulder to the other. "But _not_ my problem."

"Listen up, asshole, whether or not you care about the future or whatever, _I_ do, and I swear to god I'll—"

"Beat up the scrawny diabetic?"

Shark blinks. "What?"

"Watch what you swear to whom."

"Scrawny what?"

Kaito can feel a headache coming on, light but persistent. "Don't you have a class to skip or something?"

"Yeah," says Shark, waving the pass in Kaito's face. "English."

And they fall in step.

* * *

And Kaito sort of falls into a routine. He wakes up, has breakfast; swallows a pill, kisses his little brother on the forehead. Walks Haruto to his stop, bikes himself to school. Homeroom; a few classes. Lunch with Yuma and Shark. Health, English. His locker. Home.

And things are… well, he wants to say they're okay. Because he finds that he's actually been smiling more. Smiling at all. Whistling a little, songs they play on the P.A. before school officially starts, or else picking up on tunes of which he doesn't remember the source. Haruto notices, and regularly asks how his friends are, which… friends.

Kaito says the word over and over in his head, and then says it aloud one night while he's face up in bed, counting the plastic stars on his ceiling to see if any fell off or glowed their last. "Friends," and he didn't consider calling them that until Haruto did.

google dot com tab define friends: /frend/. a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection. a person whom one knows, likes, and trusts.

He knows them. He talks to them, and they to him, and he doesn't take his book out anymore (even if it's in his backpack), and Shark doesn't bring out his phone, and it's only week three and Yuma has convinced Shark to dig up his Duel Monsters, and um, they trust Kaito to keep score in what should be his English notebook but is mostly sketches, and… it's nice.

It's nice. Kaito sort of looks forward to it, maybe. He likes being at home and he likes being in his room (doesn't actually like his room), but there's something about that hour of time each weekday that's his, his and Yuma's and Shark's, and he relishes it. Relishes it and the two hours after it in Health and in English, where Shark eventually ends up in the seat behind _him_ because Rio complained. Now they whisper snide remarks—or, more often, Shark feels the need to raise his hand and say something stupid that just makes it obvious he didn't read the book. Kaito didn't read it either, but he actually has some idea about what he's talking—so he raises his hand, too, and counters Shark's argument one-two-snap.

His meds and thoughts are kind of moderated by the quotidian grind, too. The same amount of food every day, the same amount of exercise, the same pills at the same times. He skips breakfast sometimes but his pockets are stuffed with emergency chocolate and caramel and he can deal.

It starts to feel like maybe sometimes he is a person, living and breathing, day by day.

Except that misery knows no better ally than Crossit's stupid assignments.

It's the fourth week of school and upperclassmen privileges are finally in place—the three of them are now allowed to have lunch off-campus. Kaito, Shark, and Yuma (but mostly Yuma) have therefore laid claim on the jungle gym at the park a block down. Yuma proclaimed himself king of the monkey bars and is laughing at how easy they are, backwards and forwards and walking on top; Shark grabbed himself a swing in which to rock back and forth, not really in the mood to move but having nowhere else to sit that will not sully his all-important varsity jacket in filth; Kaito is in the open-air clubhouse, his back against a tic-tac-toe game, a worksheet balanced on one knee, due next period and ready to be bullshat.

"What do I look for in a partner?" asks Kaito, peering at the assignment as though he's been asked to decipher Spanish.

"Someone cute!" Yuma says through his sandwich.

"Doesn't matter," provides Shark. "No one would want you."

"So you've told me," says Kaito, and writes down  witty. "You're awfully preoccupied with who may or may not be into me."

Shark recoils, glaring up at him, and is there a blush creeping onto his cheeks? Is this guy serious?

"Excuse me?"

"One might think you're jealous," Kaito says, and scribbles intelligent.

Kaito's not _one_ , of course, because he's pretty sure that three weeks into knowing the guy, Shark has a crush on Yuma Tsukumo. He doodles the kid's name in English and thinks awkwardly covering it when Kaito turns around will work; the other day, on the subject of the kanji in their name, Shark even asked which ones Yuma used and probably took a mental note— _nine-ten-nine_ —to practice later.

(Yuma was quite pleased to discover that Shark and his sister spent a few years attending what he called "weekend Japanese school hell." Kaito spent most of that conversation silently flipping through Yuma's binder.)

"Hey," says Shark now, yanking Kaito's thoughts away from where they floated to the few kana he knows, traced and copied and memorized over and over. "What're you even doing? eHarmony? That hopeless?"

"Our homework."

Shark tenses. "We had—"

"How expected," comments Yuma, as Shark, panicked, leaps off his swing and climbs the spacenet to Kaito's side. Kaito proffers the sheet loosely between two fingers. Shark grabs it; Shark who "actually maybe wanted to pass" as though Kaito didn't want to do the same, Shark whose eyes widen, Shark who curses with the realization of a kid who's got fifteen minutes to answer twenty questions about life, the universe, and what they want in their future partner—in complete sentences.

"Hey, don't copy my answers," says Kaito, snatching it back to finish. "Won't get you anywhere."

Shark jumps down from the platform to his backpack, leaned against the swings; grabs it, unzips it, spills the contents onto the mulch to hunt for the offending assignment, all the while muttering something that sounds suspiciously like "duck duck duck."

"Is this for that future class?" Yuma slides next to Kaito, craning to see the questions. He's heard all about Senior Health through the copious amount of time Kaito and Shark spend dreading it; Yuma, bless his heart, thought it sounded fun. He asked right away if they were to do the baby project, to which Shark responded that he thought Crossit was joking but Kaito responded that he wouldn't put it past the man, and Yuma thought that was so _cool_ , sounds like something right off of a TV show, "You both better make me the godfather!"

"Whoa," he says now. "It seriously asks you what you want in a partner, is your teacher doing a matchmaking thing?"

"Who knows," says Kaito, and moves onto the next question, which wonders how many kids he wants. The answer is, obviously, _none_.

Somehow, Yuma's surprised at that. "Really?"

"Really." He can't see himself with kids. Can't picture himself with anyone in that kind of… light, you know? Kaito with a partner, never mind a family; Kaito with a boyfriend or a girlfriend or whatever, Kaito with a daughter or a son? No, it doesn't add up.

It's always been him and Haruto. Him and his little brother and his dad now, Mom before. And that's how it'll be. Except…

Well, Haruto is different from Kaito, isn't he? Haruto is more like Yuma. More the kind to fall in love and get hurt by it, more the kind to share himself with people and not care if he really gets anything in return… So maybe it _won't_ always be just him and just Kaito, doesn't Kaito have to grow up, isn't that why he's staring at this sheet in the first place? He contests it; his eyes read the words but his brain refuses to comprehend, _what do you want what do you dream what are your short and long-term goals_?

Nothing, to sleep, I don't have any; just to get through today, just to get through tomorrow. _In what subjects do you excel?_ All of them. _Which do you like?_ Science. Engineering. Physics, too, until he took the AP and failed it, Physics was harder than the other classes and he'd stay up all night to work through it for the A, but maybe…

Maybe that's what made it worth it.

It was harder, but it was easier at the same time. Physics with its unit on astronomy and the star charting project, physics with the equations that made sense once you thought about them a certain way, physics that reminded him of Mom, nights on the rooftop of their house in Wisconsin with a cup of hot chocolate in one hand a blanket in the other. Haruto, small and asleep, curled up between Kaito and their mother, his breath the beat to which she sang their song.

But Kaito failed at Physics. One. One out of five, no recommendation, qualified? don't make me laugh, below average, worse than below average, eighty dollars thrown at the stupid CollegeBoard and wasted, just to tell Kaito that there isn't any point in pursuing this. Physics, astronomy, it takes a rocket scientist and you'll never be one; something that has to do with space and with energy and with matter, the only thing that's ever really been fun to him, and the only thing that always seems to be just out of his grasp.

Stars. Up in the sky. Too far, galaxies too far, far, away. Galaxies. Galaxy-Eyes. Photons, and dragons, a fantasy, a dream. A card. He's…

He's sweating. He's thirsty? Kaito takes a swig of his water bottle. Yuma is looking through all the other questions and saying something, all his suggestions punctuated with, "Right, Kaito?", and Kaito would nod but his head is so heavy and he is so thirsty, his throat dry, and he really needs to take a piss, he…

Kaito stands up and pulls on his backpack and says, "See you guys in class"; is asked where he's going, answers the bathroom, and there is Shark with the "I'll come, too," like Kaito needs a damn bodyguard or Shark needs to touch-up his makeup. Lunch isn't over for another fifteen minutes.

But they go together, Kaito hunched and slow. He takes out the stupid meter and pricks his finger and does the check—and, yeah, wow, 263, bad.

He… didn't refill the medicine chamber on his keys. And… okay, he's supposed to keep the insulin with the nurse, but, aha, screw that… and so he's screwed.

He takes one pill, pees, and is stared at. Shark hasn't asked even though Kaito mentioned it two weeks ago, but it's not like Kaito is trying to hide it, so…

Their eyes meet in the mirror. Shark asks, "What did you put for number three?"

Does he honestly expect Kaito to remember which question was which? Kaito asks as much and Shark scowls.

"The one about a partner."

Asking a question like that somehow makes Shark look vulnerable, the hint of red back in his cheeks and his inability to navigate a normal conversation plain in his furrowed brow.

"Does it matter? Just make something up."

"This is Crossit," Shark points out. "He'll probably remember what we write for the rest of the year and base our tests on it and junk."

"How about," Kaito suggests, "someone who engages you with your background."

"Someone who… what?"

"Someone who can deal with how stupid you are," Kaito continues, listing things off on his fingers as he tries to placebo his blood back to normal. "Someone with big, adorable red eyes."

"Kaito—"

"No, mine are gray."

"You know that's not what I meant."

"Make it up! Google it! You have a phone, don't you?"

Shark stares. Kaito takes a breath.

"You okay?"

"Fine," says Kaito, and with five minutes left they head to class, where Crossit collects their assignments and anonymously reads some of their answers out loud. He takes the time to stare at everyone meaningfully, to have them reflect on whomever mentioned _someone happier than me_ , to speak with them about life, the universe, and soul searching, which would all be fantastic and helpful if anyone actually cared. That's the thing about being high school seniors: old enough to know that this might be important someday, young enough not to give a damn.

Kaito pulls out his English notebook and a pencil. Ginga, me, koshi, ryu. Love, partners, life, who cares? 銀河, 眼, 光子, 竜. 

To his left, Shark has earbuds strung elaborately through his shirt and into his ears. He's doodling in the margins, too; tiny little comics of boys playing in bands, and then some numbers, 九十九.


	6. Dates & Don'ts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> posted: 3 february 2014  
> edited : 28 march 2017  
> —
> 
> MONDAY, OCTOBER 3 - TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2011.

Shark Kamishiro has a motorcycle.

Kaito learns this the day he skips first period and homeroom in favor of a morning on the campus roof with _The Black Mirror_ and a bottle of water; he hears the engine wane off in the parking lot a few minutes into what should be second period, glances its way, and who does he see but Shark Kamishiro, late but pulling off his helmet like he's striding into his gang's hideout. Are motorcycles even allowed at school?

Oh. Shark is hiding it in the bushes. There it is.

Blackmail material.

Except that when Kaito brings up the tardiness at lunch and Shark is pissed off at Kaito's audacity to know things, Shark is more visibly _sad_ about it than anything else. His swinging is forlorn when Yuma jumps into his face with the, "What's wrong, Ryoga?" and Shark withdraws into his dumb letterman, his hair drooping as he mutters, "Shark Drake's not doing so well."

Shark-what-now?

"What did the mechanic say?" Yuma prods, and it clicks.

"You _named_ your bike?"

And then there's the glare, so Kaito shakes his head and rolls his eyes, turning back to _Oedipus Rex_. "Your face could get stuck like that, you know."

Shark ignores him.

"Don't worry, Ryoga," Yuma says then, brilliance in his eyes as he pulls Shark's swing back, "my dad can pick you up in the morning! We can come to school together until it gets fixed." Then he gives Shark a mighty push and he's soaring, except he looks pissed about it.

Kaito snorts so loud that Yuma turns. "What's wrong?"

Kaito doesn't know how to break the news that Ryoga probably doesn't care about getting to school on time and Yuma likely made the guy's entire life worse by offering, so all he says is, "Watch out," lest Yuma be smacked in the face by Shark's pendulating butt.

Fortunately, Shark yanks the ropes to slow down. "Ignore him," he says, cheeks pink, and for all the world he looks like a seven-year-old miffed at his chaperone. "He's an idiot."

"That's mean," says Yuma, and pulls the ropes back again.

"Yeah, Shark," Kaito calls down. "That's mean. I'm hurt."

Next oscillation Shark leaps onto the mulch, climbs up to Clubhouse Kaito, snatches Kaito's book, and conclusively smacks him upside the head. "Good."

Everything is as it should be.

It's the second month of school and autumn is creeping in, and Shark's letterman and Kaito's Portal hoodie don't actually care, but the calendar mandates that houses and classrooms decorate themselves in shades of orange and black, and monsters and skeletons and long-term zombie turkeys have crawled out of the woodwork, so if the weather refuses to pick up the pace, the atmosphere supplies the Halloween chill.

Yuma, of course, is not one to refuse the calendar its vanity. Kaito is informed on the following Monday that Shark woke up on October 1st to several excited texts foretelling a month of endless holiday cheer from the tenth grader who'd never before had friends with whom to properly enjoy one. Yuma isn't that hard to figure out, but somehow he surprises them anyway, and that's what really makes him endearing.

But, you know, Shark isn't that hard to figure out, either. For all his complaining about Yuma's motormouth, it's plain to see he doesn't actually mind.

More than plain. Kind of blatant. But, hey, Shark and Yuma are closer to each other than either is to him, and whether that's because Shark really obviously wants to hold Yuma's hand or because they're lab partners or because neither of them has any real contact with Kaito outside of school, Kaito's fine with it. He's okay with just sort of having school friends. It's something he's barely had before, and it… keeps them at a safe distance.

Hm.

...That distance doesn't prevent them from being friends, okay, and Yuma wouldn't let that happen, anyway. Just that interacting with them, no matter how pleasant, is exhausting. He welcomes the quiet at home, punctuated only by the sounds of people living—Haruto on the Wii, Dad's microwave dinner, the angry hum of the fridge—and the obscene muttering of his bedroom walls.

Kaito and Yuma talk at lunch and Yuma asks Kaito if he brought his deck and Kaito says no, and then Yuma asks Kaito for help with his homework and Kaito helps.

Kaito and Shark trade insults, or trade glances when Yuma is being… well, himself: when he slips in a word that he's actually not sure if it's Japanese or English because his home is like that; when Yuma grins like a child and it reminds Kaito so much of Haruto he wants to squish his cheeks; when Yuma's surprisingly… well, American, straight-up rude, or letting loose a word that to Yuma is a "damn" but for Shark a "gosh-diddly-darnit."

Kaito and Yuma do their homework and then they let Shark copy it, or Kaito tells Shark what happened in last night's act of the Oedipus Cycle, because it's just a fact of life that Shark isn't about to do the work and his sister isn't going to tell him what happened; and, hey, you know what, when Shark's depending on him, Kaito is more inclined to do the work himself. He's not even sure whether it's to prove he's better or just so that neither of them has to fail anymore.

Kaito comes home and kisses Haruto on the head and helps him solve a puzzle, and then he heads upstairs and thinks that he's already lost his phone; if only he could use that stupid Nokia charger on himself.

Things, the walls remind him, are always easier when they're for someone else.

Nevertheless autumn has come, and the air is crisp and fresh and pumpkin-spice, and Kaito has his friend Yuma who has his friend Shark who has his friend-person-guy Kaito. Kaito likes his friends and his friends like him, and Oedipus likes his mom and his mom likes him, and presently Kaito is saved from a helluva nap by Yuma yelling his name and announcing that this weekend they are going bowling.

"We're going what," says Kaito, uncomprehending, and sees that Shark is surprised, too, but not in his usual I-am-appaled-at-the-very-implication-that-I-still-watch-Saturday-morning-cartoons kind of way. It's more like…

"Weren't you listening? We never really do anything outside of school work and dueling and Ryoga says he knows this cool place with an arcade and an ice rink and bowling and stuff!"

...Like Shark just asked Yuma out on a date while he was certain Kaito wouldn't hear, and Yuma totally missed the point.

"I don't really like bowling," Kaito tries, to which Yuma laughs, says that's no surprise because Kaito doesn't really like anything, but come on, it'll be fun. Shark continues to be a generally moody baby, and it's brought to Kaito's attention that this all came from an agreement that Shark will only carpool if Yuma goes on a date with him, and wow Kaito needs to get out of this by any means necessary. "Wait. I just remembered. I think Haruto has an—a, uh, thing this weekend."

Kaito usually sleeps through those appointments, but not technically untrue.

"Oh! But you have to bring him, too, obviously."

"I don't think that—"

"No more excuses," Yuma warns, waggling a finger menacingly. Behind him, Shark flips the bird.

The class that follows is full of angry dicks and doodles on otherwise empty leaves in Shark's notebook, which are eventually ripped and assembled into an origami shuriken. Inside:

did you try just saying NO  
  
---  
  
Yeah, have you _met_ Yuma?

did you try reminding him how gay you are?  
  
---  
  
Shark asks to go to the bathroom, and doesn't come back for the rest of the day. 

* * *

(It really is true that he doesn't like bowling, though. Sure, he's logged hours at Wii Sports, but he's only ever been to an actual alley once—the spectacular week that Chris's family spent in LA and their respective moronic parentals decided, screw Disney, let's go bowling, _that's_ the best thing LA has to offer us tonight. The Arclights were good at the game, Kaito and his father were not, Thomas was an asshole, water not under the bridge, water _never _under the bridge, fuck you Thomas.__

Haruto seemed to enjoy it, though. And in retrospect, Kaito's fairly certain Chris threw some of his turns.)

* * *

The following morning, Shark pulls him aside.

"Dude," he says, looking this way and that, "come _on_."

"Do you think maybe this is your problem? I'm not the one with the crush on the cute Japanese transfer."

"He's not a transf—that's not what I—"

"But he's still cute, right?"

“I’ll tell you who’s _not_ cute—”


	7. Sisters & Brothers

On Saturday, Shark brings his guitar.

He brings his guitar and wears his black skinny jeans with the rips at the knee and the chain for his wallet, wears the same stupid jacket that makes no sense for him to have because he’s not on any teams, and he wears his perpetual glare to match. Kaito’s own clothes obviously blow Shark out of the, ahem, water: jeans he’s washed too much and are definitely too loose, a T-shirt that Haruto got in elementary school and was too big, and the first hoodie he could scavenge from his closet — a black-and-red zip-up emblazoned with the numeral IV (Chris got it from his younger brother on his birthday a year ago and couldn’t refuse it, but Chris Doesn’t Wear Hoodies, so guess where it ended up).

Kaito’s not sure why Shark is glaring at him like Kaito peed on Shark Drake, but he can take a guess: Kaito got to their destination before Shark did, at about the same time as Yuma, and since they didn’t want to buy their tickets without their friend, Kaito and Yuma loitered outside and Yuma’s dad hovered in the parking lot for a few minutes, and hey, how about that California weather, different today, right—and this is, of course, all deeply insulting to Shark, who was probably thinking about getting here early enough for some alone time—but, hey. You snooze you lose.

(And if his guess is right, Kaito can’t imagine what Shark will think if he ever finds out about the extent of Kaito and Yuma’s conversation, about how Kaito was saying something stupid about Haruto’s homework when Yuma cut him off with a “Hey, look at this,” and showed him a picture on his phone, and Kaito stared at it, uncomprehending, until Yuma explained that his friend sent it to him—”I mean, my other friend, you don’t know him, he—he’s really into collecting things”—and that it was a stuffed animal that he’d been after for a really long time, and then Yuma sort of smiled and frowned and grew really silent and Kaito didn’t know what to do so he just said, “It’s cute,” and Yuma murmured a “Yeah…”).

(But).

“Hey,” says Kaito presently, poking Yuma in the shoulder when he spots Shark, “Look who decided to show up.”

And Yuma looks up as Shark arrives, Shark and his guitar and his glare that’s two frequencies higher than usual and Kaito rolls his eyes and repeats, “Way to show up,” and Shark ignores him in favor of fighting off Yuma’s tackle hug.

“Ryoga! You brought it!”

“...I said I would,” says Shark, and oh my _god_ they’re talking about the guitar aren’t they.

“You play,” says Kaito, because _of course_ he does.

Shark ignores him again, apologizes to Yuma, and leads them inside, Yuma bouncing behind him and Kaito watching his back like, what, because Shark definitely wasn’t this much of a baby about this yesterday, glared at Kaito but didn’t outright ignore him, usually couldn’t help but jump at the chance for a snarkfest. Maybe it has to do with the guitar; Yuma’s the reason Shark brought it, apparently, so Yuma knew Shark played and Kaito didn’t, and maybe Shark wanted to keep a it secret…?

Well, whatever. Kaito doesn’t care enough to investigate.

Yuma wants to go a few rounds of DDR first, but there’s a huge line so they end up getting a lane instead—after Shark _swears_ that he’ll dance with Yuma when they come back, Yuma won’t talk to him for a whole _week_ if they don’t. Shark says something along the lines of “uh what” and Yuma takes that as a yes, jumps in excitement, and leads the way to the lane, announcing that he’ll go first. 

The only bowling Yuma’s ever done is, like Kaito, the Wii variety, and even then he hasn’t touched the thing since 2008 when the craze sort of died out, because that was when his sister was around. Kaito'd forgot that Yuma had an older sister. It fits him; Yuma’s definitely the baby of the family, not a first or an only or a middle. There’s too much love poured into him for him to be anyone else, just like… well, Haruto. 

Yuma makes a big deal about how he’s gonna _own_ the other two, who have no objections and flinch at the word “own,” so they settle down at their table, Shark pulling out his guitar and Kaito watching him like _why does that have shark stickers on it_. They probably _should’ve_ been watching Yuma—who, while they’re both occupied, picks up a nine pound ball and swings it back and forth, his tongue sticking out as he squints at the pins—and then drops it on his foot and yells so loudly that the employees run over with a first-aid kit faster than Kaito and Shark are by Yuma’s side. Luckily, it’s mostly Yuma being dramatic; once they’ve properly inspected the damage there isn’t much to worry about, but Yuma sits back in his chairs with wide-eyes and declares anyway, “I almost _died_!”

Kaito promises him that Yuma would not have died, but Shark is pale after that and carefully lays his bass into its case again to keep an eye on Yuma next time he goes up (because _nothing_ is going to stop Yuma from winning, okay, not even almost dying, and he’s mostly leaning on his left foot, anyway).

But for all his gloating, when he’s back in the game Yuma gets two gutter balls, and Kaito stares at the scoreboard and doesn’t think he’ll do much better, so he offers to let Yuma take his turn; Yuma says that’s just Kaito being _boring_ again, though, so Kaito goes next, picks up a heavy pink ball with finger sockets too big for him, and he bowls, closing his eyes and remembering what Chris told him. Then he opens them and does the opposite and... gets a spare, which is pretty cool, and Yuma cheers for him, but Shark looks generally unimpressed.

“My turn,” Shark says, and Yuma shouts out a good luck, to which, yeah, cute pink cheeks, Kamishiro. Shark picks up a purple ball at fourteen pounds; measures his success; strikes.

Kaito tries not to look impressed. Fortunately, Yuma looks it enough for the both of them. “As expected, Shark! You’re good at every sport, aren’t you?”

“Naturally. It’s your turn.” Yuma nods, high fiving Shark on his way up. He takes a bowling ball, sticks out his tongue again, and readies to throw—but right before he does, he unexpectedly shouts, “ _KATTOBINGU DAZE, ORE_!” Which takes Kaito and Shark and like two other people in the adjacent alleys off guard, but it also seems to take the ball off guard, so much so that Yuma lands a strike, too.

What the hell was that?

Yuma’s cheers are ecstatic and Shark is happy for him, and so is Kaito, high fives all around, but now when Kaito stares up at the scoreboard he’s dead last and he doesn’t really want to be _that_ dead last, so it’s up time for him to keep up his game. He unzips his hoodie and throws it on his chair, which makes him feel serious; grabs the bowling ball he’s decided will be lucky, a pleasing shade of baby blue; locks eyes with the pins, with Shark, with Yuma. It’s time.

...To lose. Half an hour later has Shark boasting about his victory, 200 to Yuma’s 150 to Kaito’s, like, 90, and then, because he’d taken his guitar again to tune it as per Yuma’s request, he clears his throat and says, “Hey, Kaito, I wrote a song for you.”

“How thoughtful.”

Shark starts to strum. Then:

“ _No time for losers, ‘cause we are the champions—_ ”

“Whooooa, Ryoga!” Yuma exclaims, and he’s star-struck. “You have a really good voice, you should be in a band!”

And there’s the red in Shark’s cheeks, because he wasn’t expecting that and seems to be regretting opening his mouth. But then Shark admits, “I… have an EP.”

An… EP.

Wow.

“You didn’t know?” Kaito asks Yuma, surprised. Well, like, Kaito didn’t know either, but, hey, Kaito doesn’t know much of anything, and the fact that Shark managed to keep something like _that_ from Yuma, but Yuma knew about the guitar… honestly, how stupid _are_ these two?

Actually, Yuma probably doesn’t even know what an EP is, huh?

“Hey,” says Yuma, crossing his arms and pouting, “I just moved here. I don’t know your guys’s history. You two knew each other much longer than I did!”

Kaito and Shark share a look, and this time it’s of mutual confusion, and then of disgust. “I’d never even seen him until the first day of school.”

“Really?” says Yuma, tilting his head. “You guys seem kinda… you know, so I thought, ‘Wow, Kaito and Ryoga must have a past.’”

“I wasn’t even at this school last year,” Shark says, shaking his head as he puts the guitar back in its resting place one final time, and Kaito briefly wonders if that has a name, too, until Shark and pointedly glares at him as Kaito pulls his hoodie back on, which, what.

Yuma blinks and pulls at Shark’s letterman. “Really? But then how do you have your jacket?”

It’s a good enough question—Shark isn’t on any teams, or in any clubs, or anything like that, not at Heartland, anyway; he shouldn’t have a varsity jacket because he’s not on varsity… well, anything, but he’s had it with him almost every day of school, shine or shine or vague drizzle, and it doesn’t make much sense—except that Kaito can guess that it’s not Shark’s varsity jacket at all.

“It’s,” says Shark, who didn’t expect Yuma to be quite so perceptive, “my sister’s.”

“You have a sister?!”

But maybe not as perceptive as he originally thought. Rio Kamishiro’s name is on the PA almost every day for her accomplishment on this team or in that club; she’s basically the most involved girl in the entire school, the exact opposite of her twin brother, who is only ever on the daily announcements if he’s got into a fight with someone, or been accused of doing as much, so the fact that Yuma doesn’t even realize she exists is kind of… well, Kaito’s more attentive than Yuma is, and Rio’s in one of his classes, too, so he can give Yuma a break.

“...Yeah.”

“Whoa! How come you never told me?!”

“She’s... mostly in Honors classes,” Shark says, and he looks kind of upset about it, plays with his hands and a ring that sits on his right ring finger. “So I don’t really get to see her that much anymore. She’s always busy.”

Yuma has a million questions, because for all he and Shark text, Yuma’s apparently never had the opportunity to ask Shark about his family. He asks about Shark’s sister, asks about her name and her age and her this and her that, and Shark answers, and their bowling timer ends up running out, but it’s nice to just sort of sit around and talk and without the constraint of forty minutes. Speaking of which, Yuma’s so surprised when he hears about Rio’s being a twin that he kind of explodes at it, asks a million more questions and wonders if they’re telepathic, and why he’s never seen her before, and finally Kaito has to gently poke into Yuma’s ramble and ask if maybe they can continue interrogating Shark over lunch. They pack up their things and head to the food court, where there’s vending machines with overpriced food and chips and coffee, a fast food chain with suspiciously underpriced chicken, a pizzaria—you know, the works. The boys decide on pizza, lacking in peppers and in onion, which, explains Yuma loudly, Shark doesn’t like. They end up, somehow, talking about their dumb future class again, and it occurs to Yuma for the first time that Kaito and Shark complain about that class a lot—but they never actually talk about… well, their futures.

“You’re both seniors, right? College?”

“Gap year,” Shark admits.

“Why?”

“Save up some money, I guess,” which Kaito figures is a lie, because in the neighborhood they’re in? Paying for college isn’t as big a deal as it could be — unless Ryoga has some big, depressing secret or really unhelpful parents.

“I think I want to take a gap year, too,” Yuma puts in then, cheerfully munching on some french fries, and Kaito is not the least bit surprised. “I dunno if I wanna go to college. Too much school for me. I think… I wanna see the world first!”

“Yeah? Like where?” asks Shark, as casually as he can, and probably makes a mental note to book his flights. 

Yuma grins, like he thought Shark would never ask. “Everywhere! Ho Chi Minh. Denmark! Hong Kong. Mount Everest. Paris. The Angel Falls. The Congo!” A string of seemingly unconnected places, all as fantastical as the other, and Kaito can see Yuma there, see him in the city and in villages where he learns just enough of the language to pass by, see him swimming in lakes clear enough to see the bottom, just see him anywhere and everywhere. It makes him smile. Shark, too.

Then Yuma adds, quietly, almost cautiously, like it’s a secret and he’s just decided to trust Shark and Kaito with it, they better zip their lips, “And then maybe Japan. I have a friend there that I miss a lot.” He looks lost for a moment, sad, confused; but then Yuma shakes his head and his grin returns, and he turns his attention to Kaito. “What about you, Kaito?”

“What about me?”

“Where are you applying for college? You’re really smart, so I’m sure you can do anything you want!” 

Kaito blinks, frowns. Stares down at his drink, like the answer is spinning in the icy depths of a cheap soda.

What about him? 

What does he want to do, and how does he plan to do it? Isn’t he a senior, shouldn’t he be applying for colleges — isn’t that what their future class is about, didn’t his English teacher offer to look over their applications and essays? Isn’t he gonna be eighteen in less than six months, a full-on—gulp—adult?

Last year, Kaito would’ve had an answer, would’ve had a plan. Now he...

“Astronomy, I bet.”

Kaito looks up. That… was right.

Shark’s watching him carefully.

“What?”

“Like Mizael,” presses Shark, and looks down again; his cell phone is out in his hands and Facebook is pulled up, Shark scrolling through his newsfeed with all of his friends from his old days at Barian.

“Who’s Mizael?” asks Yuma. “Someone else in your grade?”

“No,” says Shark. “He went to my old school." That catches Yuma's intrigue. Shark doesn’t usually talk about his old school. “He, uh… mentioned you before.”

“He’s my cousin,” says Kaito, and pokes at the ice with his straw.

Mizael is… his cousin, yeah; he’s Kaito’s mom’s sister’s kid and so he’s Kaito’s cousin, the one who graduated from Barian Academy two school years ago even though he’s barely six months older, the one who was at that Robotics meet when Kaito was on the team in sophomore year, the one who’s half-Chinese, half-Japanese and the one who’s fluent in both. Mizael’s family lives, if Kaito remembers correctly, a few towns over, close to the same academy that Shark was kicked out of to land in HC and the same one Mizael graduated with honors—but Kaito hasn’t seen his aunt in years, and hearing Mizael’s name just kind of makes him feel sick. Sicker than usual.

“Wait,” says Yuma, when Kaito doesn’t say anything else, “Astronomy like stars and space and stuff?”

Astroengineering, actually. His mom and Mizael’s mom and Long-jisan were all in the program together at Ursa.

“...Yeah,” says Kaito. “Stars and space and stuff.”

“Whoa, are you gonna be an astronaut?”

Kaito doubts that there are emergency insulin pumps in space. “No.” 

“Huh?”

“I’m more for the engineering aspect of it,” Kaito offers, sighing, and slurps at his drink in hope that Yuma will get that he doesn’t really want to talk about it, because it’s... pretty much a lie, ‘cause, yeah, when he was little he wanted to be an astronaut, there’re stars clustered on his ceilings and galaxies clouded in his head, and, yeah, he really did want to be an engineer, but now he doesn’t particularly care for either—now, really, whenever he thinks about a career or college or even graduating high school, his only goal is to stop doing this wonderful thing he calls “existing.”

Yuma, of course, doesn’t catch on. “Ohh, like physics and all that?”

“I guess.”

“So that’s why you’re so good at it! Maaan, physics is so hard, all the stupid equations and junk. But! You’ll always be there to help us, right, Kaito?”

Shark scowls. “I don’t need Kaito’s help.”

Kaito rolls his eyes, steals one of Shark’s french fries, gets looked at in utter disbelief, and wonders why he feels so sad. “Of course,” he says, then. “Anytime.”

* * *

Yuma’s dreams of DDR are destroyed halfway through the pizza, when Yuma gets a call from his dad informing him that he’s coming to pick them up in ten. Yuma doesn’t argue; just looks let down and makes Shark swear that they’re doing DDR first next time (and now Kaito knows what his own RSVP will be), and that Yuma totally plans to beat him. Shark consents with a “yeah, whatever,” and glares at Kaito one last time when the two of them get in Kazuma’s car, which Kaito figures is Shark’s way of saying “See you around.”

The second they’re settled in and they’ve said hello to Kazuma and Yuma’s waved good-bye to Shark, Yuma turns back to him and says, “So that’s why you run Galaxy-Eyes!”

“Ran,” Kaito corrects automatically. “What’re you talking about?”

“Space. Galaxies. Photon deck. Astronomy. Right?”

“Don’t think about it too much, Yuma.”

* * *

Instead, Kaito thinks about it too much.

When he gets home and grabs a water bottle from the kitchen and planks on the couch, Kaito thinks, and he thinks and he thinks and he thinks about his day, and then drifts into sleep that’s not really sleep because he thinks about his day in that, too; thinks about Yuma and Shark and Mizael, thinks about gap years and astronomy and galaxies with eyes, thinks about all of this and only stops when Haruto comes back and shakes him up. 

The first thing Haruto does is point at the meter, and Kaito obligingly lets his little brother prod his finger and report his findings. In a way, Haruto takes more care of Kaito than vice versa.

“How was your day?” Haruto asks, like he’s been doing every day of the week. It takes Kaito a moment to remember.

“Nice,” he answers, finally, and he… finds himself smiling.

“Niisan!” Haruto exclaims, because he’s grinning and he’s happy, but he’s also kind of scandalized by it.

“Hush,” mutters Kaito, noogying him, and Haruto laughs, and Kaito does, too, until Kaito stops and he frowns and Haruto asks him what’s wrong and Kaito shakes his head. Nothing’s wrong. It’s just… not everything’s right.

“Haruto,” he asks later, thinking about his aunt and thinking about Mizael and thinking about a little house with a roof and a clear view of the sky, “Do you ever miss Mom?”


	8. Tricks & Treats

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thiiiiis might be over-saturated with Batman junk. So! For your clarification! There are five different Robins in the main continuity; the two mainly referenced here are Jason Todd (who dies, then comes back as the anti-hero Red Hood) and Tim Drake (who comes after Jason, and is friends with [Impulse](http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110420100708/heroes-dreams/images/e/ec/Impulse.png)). Impulse and Tim are both original members of the comic book team known as "Young Justice"—not the cartoon series, with which you are more likely to be acquainted (GW takes place in 2011, so the relevant characters haven't debuted on the cartoon yet).
> 
> Ephraim and Eirika are the twin lords of Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. They are [vaguely incestual](http://gyazo.com/4de0114f96724af2e5745e0853e6b9f8.png) and [super hot](http://serenesforest.net/img/top8.png).

A mysterious bag of Midnight Milky Way materializes in Kaito’s kitchen. He finds it there one morning the week before Halloween, and thanks Haruto for remembering his favorite; except that Haruto’s just as surprised at its appearance as Kaito was, and there’s only one other candidate for whomever brought it. Kaito stares at it, his stomach vs his stubbornness—but whichever one’s about to win, Haruto’s the victor in the finals, because he stuffs the bag in a drawer for later, saying that if he finds it prematurely open, Kaito’s gonna be in _so_ much trouble.

(Kaito opens it once Haruto’s left and stuffs some in his pockets. He’ll buy another bag later, and leave most of that one for Faker and Haruto to finish on their own).

So it is that the week of Halloween arrives, and with it arrive marathons of scary movies and marathons of scary assignments (most of which Kaito doesn’t do), and, of course, sales on candy with black-and-orange wrappers, advertised in store windows and dressed in their night clothes, ready for consumption by American’s already obese youth. At school, teachers start giving out fun-sized chocolate to get students to pay attention or to reward them for bothering to show up to homeroom; and the excitement that Yuma had at the beginning of the month is nothing compared to what it becomes by the end.

“I’ve never had friends to go trick-or-treating with!” Yuma exclaims, while they’re walking (or, in his case, skipping) home together one day and the topic comes up because Shark tripped over a black cat decoration in someone’s yard (“I could’ve _died_ ”). Neither Kaito nor Shark have the heart to tell Yuma that he still doesn’t: Kaito’s usual Halloween plans involve going out with Haruto to some key houses in the neighborhood, but Haruto hasn’t been all that excited about it this year, so Kaito doesn’t know if Haruto even wants to. Whatever the case, Kaito doubts Yuma will want to go with them, because even for Yuma it’d probably be too slow an affair.

Shark, meanwhile, has a more eyeroll-worthy excuse.

“I have a gig,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets like it isn’t ninety degrees out, and then in a mumble that Kaito barely hears, and Yuma probably misses completely: “You should come.”

“No trick-or-treating?!”

“Hmph.” Shark crosses his arms, obviously upset that Yuma didn’t respond to his invitation, and too nervous of rejection to ask again. “I haven’t trick-or-treated since I was about twelve.”

“More free candy for me!” Yuma turns on his heel to face Kaito. “What about you?”

What Kaito does depends on Haruto, and he says as much; considers inviting Yuma with him, but remembers Shark’s glare from last time, and decides to do that in private.

“What, so neither of you know what you’re dressing up as?!” Yuma stomps his foot impatiently. “What’re you wearing to school?”

“The scariest thing I can think of Kaito being is himself,” Shark remarks, examining his nails, which, Kaito notes, are a pleasing shade of turquoise today. “If he makes his hair any pointier he could use it as a weapon.”

“Shark doesn’t need to wear a costume, he’s already a dick.”

“ _Guys_ ,” whines Yuma, “I’m being serious. Don’t people dress up at HC?”

“My snooty private school had a uniform,” Shark admits with a shrug. “My costume was—”

“—your skirt?” offers Kaito.

“That.”

There’s a beat before Shark realizes Kaito and Yuma are staring at him.

“That was a joke. I did not actually wear a skirt.”

“You should,” says Yuma.

“I’m sure you have the legs for it,” agrees Kaito.

Shark flushes, and probably resolves never to make a joke again.

“Anyway,” says Kaito, “the thirty-first is a furlough.” The other two give him looks like he’s just said something in Sumerian, so he clarifies: “No school.”

* * *

Last Halloween, Kaito wore a bucket.

Or, well, he would’ve; it’s just that there’s something impractical about wearing a bucket on your head, see, a disaster for peripheral vision and all that, so Kaito brought his bucket along for the candy, slipped on a domino mask, and became the Red Hood. No one in the neighborhood recognized him, but then he didn’t think anyone would; _Under the Red Hood_ only just came out that summer, and the average person didn’t watch it about two times a week.

But he had fun.

Haruto was Robin that Halloween—Haruto’s Robin _every_ Halloween—and the two of them collected a bounty that should’ve lasted two months but only did one week, because they had a few days off of school right after, so Kaito and Haruto sat themselves down for a cartoon marathon. Haruto’d seen someone in costume and had the sudden mighty need to watch the entirety of _Avatar_ —he was too young to remember its original airing—and, hey, Kaito wasn’t going to say no to that, so they got through a season and a half a day, and Haruto decided that when he grew up, he wanted to be an airbender.

Kaito remembers sorting the good chocolate and the bad chocolate and the chocolate that Kaito liked but Haruto didn’t; Kaito remembers the two orange-and-black bags of pretzels that Haruto frowned at and carefully put into their own pile. Kaito remembers that Haruto set a little pile aside for their dad, in the interest of being fair—Dad likes candy, too, right, and sometimes he brings it for us as a surprise, doesn’t he?

The doorknob starts to shake as Kaito’s thinking all that over. He slams the drawer with the Milky Way shut, sticks the wrapper in his pocket, and stands at the ready, hoping against all evidence that he won’t be caught chocolate-handed.

“ _Okaeri_ , Haruto,” he says, and waves from the kitchen.

Haruto, who’s used to Kaito taking a nap when he gets home, and not used to an _okaeri_ or a _tadaima_ , furrows his brow, looks around the room to see if there’s anything suspicious… and finds it suspiciously clear.

“Ah, _tadaima_...”

“Hey, Haruto,” says Kaito, leading the two of them out into the hall, “do you want to go trick-or-treating?”

“Uh, Niisan, Halloween’s _next_ week.”

“...That’s what I meant.”

“Well _duh._ You’re acting really weird.”

If he is, it’s probably because of hanging out with Yuma so much.

Haruto puts his backpack down and heads into the kitchen to investigate a second time; finding it clean, he opts to get some ice cream. Kaito is given the task of scooping it out, because Haruto can never quite get the shape right; and then Haruto pours on the sprinkles and grabs a spoon, and, licking his lips, sits at a counter stool to devour his snack.

“Of course I’m trick-or-treating,” Haruto continues then, like Kaito asked the stupidest question in the world. “Guess who I’m gonna be!”

Kaito climbs onto the counter to sit and pretends to think. “Spiderman?”

“Niisan.”

“Maybe the Blue Beetle?”

“ _Robin_!”

Haruto’s indignance makes him laugh. “I know. Damian this year?”

“I was thinking _Young Justice_.”

“Is the hiatus over? I’ll have to catch up.”

“Yeah! But I meant the comic. Tim.”

“Oh, yeah.”

They sit in silence for a bit, Kaito still thinking about past Halloweens and present Halloweens and about Yuma and about Haruto—who finishes his ice cream, wipes at his mouth with his sleeves, and deposits his bowl in the sink.

“Niisan?”

“Hm?”

“What’re you gonna be?”

“I don’t know,” says Kaito, resting his chin in his hands. “What should I be?”

“I won’t always be around to make all your decisions for you, y’know.”

Kaito smiles, hops off the counter, and ruffles Haruto’s hair before washing the bowl. “You’re here now, aren’t you?”

* * *

”Trick-or-treat!”

Their first trick-or-treater arrives around 5:30, when the sun’s about to go down and Kaito’s just poured out what remains of the Milky Way stash into a plastic bowl they’ll leave outside. He’s not ready yet—still hasn’t actually, um, thought of a costume, but Haruto won’t be _too_ upset about it, and so long as he and Yuma don’t double team him with the guilt he’ll be alright—so he answers the door in his _Batman_ shirt and argyle pajamas, and finds himself staring at a blur of red-and-white spandex with pink hair and a grin.

“Triiiiick-or-treat!”

Standing on Kaito’s porch is Yuma, who grins harder and spreads out his arms with a “Ta-da!”, and when Kaito doesn’t respond, nudges him with a “Well, what d’you think?”

“Impulse,” appraises Kaito, opening the door wider to let Yuma in. “You match Haruto.”

“Surprised?”

Kaito smiles and offers Yuma some of their candy, but Yuma pushes it away, frowning when he takes in Kaito’s appearance.

“You’re not ready?”

“Do I need to be? I’m just tagging along behind you guys.”

“Nooo, you’re not.”

“Huh?”

Haruto takes that moment to appear; he slides down the banister, his cape billowing behind him and his mask on upside down, the R on his chest proclaiming his allegiance if the red, yellow, and green scheme aren’t enough. He’s modded the costume so there’s no over-underwear, and went for colored pants instead of tights, but the heroic look is in no way lost when he stands up, poses, and smirks.

The acting lasts maybe two seconds, because then he sees Yuma and breaks out into this huge smile because Yuma looks _awesome_ and the two of them together are gonna get the most candy _ever_ and it’ll be _fantastic_ , and—

“Wait,” says Kaito, “the two of you?”

“Yup!”

“ _Just_ the two of you?”

“That’s right!”

“No older brothers allowed,” Haruto contributes, and, um, ouch.

“So, what, I’m supposed to stay and watch the house?”

“No way,” says Yuma, while Haruto shakes his head. “You’re going to Ryoga’s party.”

...He is?

“What.”

“C’mon, Kaito,” Yuma says, pushing Kaito in the direction of the stairs, “go have fun or something!”

Yuma needs a crash course in what Kaito does and doesn’t consider fun, because, uh, lesson one? Shark’s gig is _not_ something fun. Hell, Kaito wasn’t even invited, and even if he was, there’s no way he’d want to go, with or without Yuma, because, uh, parties? Yeah, not really Kaito’s thing. If Haruto and Yuma are so dead-set on going without him (like that’ll happen—does Yuma even know where to go?), he’ll just stay at home and answer the door and sneak Milky Ways into his pocket for later.

“I’m _not_ going to Shark’s gig.”

Yuma’s lower lip quivers, and his eyes get all wide and sad and _seriously_? “But one of us _has_ to go! We can’t just not support him.”

Support… him.

Yuma is so… Yuma.

See, Yuma can’t go to Shark’s party even if he wants to (which, Kaito is starting to get the feeling, he does) — when Shark finally got the balls to ask Yuma a second time, Yuma went and asked his dad, and Kazuma, upon piecing together what was likely to happen at a high school party on Halloween night, uttered a firm “No.” Yuma didn’t argue, but he doesn’t want to disappoint Shark, either, and, well—here they are.

Except that Kaito being there would probably be a disappointment to Shark and then some.

“I wasn’t even invited,” Kaito points out.

“So? It’s a costume party, no one’ll even notice!”

“That would require a costume.”

“Kaaaaito, it’s Halloweeeeeeen…”

Kaito sighs, and this time turns his attention to Haruto, coming down to his height and fixing Robin’s mask. “I’m not letting you two out alone. You don’t even know which houses to go to.”

Haruto argues that he does, and starts listing off the names of all their neighbors, and anyway, their town is pretty safe and all the police are out, too, so there’s really nothing for Kaito to worry about. Kaito doesn’t like it and crosses his arms and stands his ground, but Robin is good at arguing his case and Impulse is loud enough about it to—eventually—break through Kaito’s obstinance. 

“Fine,” he says, putting his hands up in defeat, “but only for a little bit. And keep me—”

—Dammit, he still hasn’t found his phone. His room has been a mess for maybe a little too long now; being living proof that it’s possible for a high schooler to function (sort of) without a cell attached to them at all times is a kind of bragging right, but it’s also kind of inconvenient. Haruto doesn’t have a phone, but Yuma does, and Kaito’d feel a lot better about the entire thing if he’d someway to contact them, to know where they are and when.

He should… really get to sorting those mountains of junk, huh, because he’s starting to lose track of everything he’s lost. Phone, iPod, some old library book, at least fifty dollars, countless homework assignments, his favorite pair of jeans. Probably his dignity is in there somewhere, too.

“Hm? Keep you what?”

Well, Shark has Yuma’s number, right? Kaito’ll just… ask to borrow it. He guesses.

Is he actually planning on doing this?

“Hey, Kaito,” says Yuma, waving his arms around to grab Kaito’s attention, “You there? We’ll be fine, okay? Go have fun!” Yuma grins again, the same grin as so many times before, the big, wide Tsukumo grin—the one that makes Kaito feel kind of warm, the way that Yuma saying his name right makes him feel warm, too. 

“We’ll be fine,” Haruto assures him one last time, squeezing his hand. “Please go, Niisan. You need to get out more, anyway.”

And so Kaito nods and goes upstairs and tries to remember where his Red Hood costume is, because he doesn’t have to come up with anything new and, well, the only person that’ll matter doesn’t know that it’s a repeat, right? He trudges through his trash on an arduous journey all the way to his closet, and trips on a wire that probably belonged to the XBOX. He curses it and the red ring, but also manages to find the gloves and the jacket and domino mask, all safe and clean on an abandoned shelf that he wouldn’t have noticed except for his vantage point.

Climbing out of the closet, he slips them on and stares at himself and feels… kind of stupid. But... at the same time, there’s a kind of giddiness, because, like… this is his. He remembers putting it together, remembers the first time he tried it on and it didn’t look quite right until he messed with the jacket’s collar; remembers the pictures Haruto made Faker take of them; remembers how he couldn’t help smiling, which felt pretty out of character.

(But it’s also like it belongs to some other Kaito in some other universe, one that weighs a little more than he does, smiles a little more than he does, lives a little more than he does. Just a tiny little bit).

There are voices calling from downstairs. If Kaito takes any longer, Haruto and Yuma’ll miss all the good candy, and he won’t hear the end of it.

Kaito stares at his reflection. He makes a few faces, just to see if he can still play the part. Frown. Scowl. Glare. Satisfied.

Haruto instantly approves, and Yuma’s totally excited, and if Young Justice gives him the thumbs up, Kaito figures he’s done well. So! The costume is deemed acceptable, the sun is setting, and the hour of candy gathering has come. Yuma and Haruto head out with salutes, and Kaito better not be lying about actually going—Haruto has ways of finding these things out, you know. 

And they’re off, Haruto’s cape swishing behind him as he airplanes away, Yuma’s hair a total mess for his running around in circles for the hell of it.

Kaito takes a look at the analog on the wall, realizes their dad’ll be home any minute, steals one last Milky Way for the road, and heads out himself.

It’s time to see if Shark’s half as good as he likes to think he is.

* * *

He isn’t. He’s better.

There’s a gated community on the other side of town, with houses that are three stories high and driveways fit for five cars, and what Shark calls a gig is actually just a party his sister threw—so it’s at his house. Kaito gets there just as Shark’s finishing a set, and, yeah, uh, wow, he’s impressed—he didn’t even realize that was Shark until the song was over and he spoke over calls for an encore.

He slinks in and leans against the wall and stares at the crowd of faces that he vaguely recognizes from school but can’t really make out for the all the fog and lights and how loud the music is, crosses his arms and is just kind of. Lost. Doesn’t know what to do while Shark is on stage (why is Kaito here, how did he let Haruto and Yuma convince him to come), so he just stares at costumes and counts all the fairy wings and the scream masks and even spots Rio, her costume on a totally different level from everyone else’s, except for Shark, who she matches, who—a… prince? A knight? Who knows.

Kaito loses track of Shark sometime between when he steps off stage and some kids start a fight over who gets to DJ the rest of the night; one of them punches another so hard he flies into the wall, and no one really wants to argue with her after that.

“And what the hell are you supposed to be?” comes the voice from beside him a few minutes after DJ Anna takes over, and a red solo is shoved into his face, which, upon inspection, yeah, punch. Kaito blinks but takes it, notices the hand that proffered is attached to a person, and the person it’s attached to is Shark Kamishiro.

“Party at your place and all you can think to do is hit on me?” asks Kaito, and Shark scowls, which looks kind of cute when he’s not in his stupid letterman. Shark is anxious when he looks over Kaito’s shoulder and Kaito has to say, “Yuma couldn’t make it.”

“So he sent you.”

“Happy Halloween.”

Shark groans and downs his drink. Kaito sips at his, too, and, hm, different, but not that bad. So he drinks more, then remembers he wanted to borrow Shark’s phone. The immediate response is, of course, a no; but when Kaito tells Shark he just wants to check on his little brother, asshole, Shark relents. Yuma doesn’t pick up right away, but on Kaito’s second try he finds out all about the hoard Impulse and Robin have gathered and are hauling back home now, so Kaito’s satisfied, thanks Yuma, looks over at Shark—who looks like he’s about to cry—and says to tell Haruto he’ll be home later and not to worry.

“You okay there?”

“Fine,” Shark says, and he’s scanning the crowd with a careful eye, like he thinks that Yuma might still show up if he wills it hard enough. Kaito leaves him be.

After a while, Shark says with some difficulty, “Efferrremm.”

“What?”

“Twins. Uhhhh, Fire Emblem. Sis’s idea.”

“Oh.”

Sip.

“You?”

“Uh, Red Hood.”

Sip, sip. Shark crushes his cup and gets another one; grabs two, and offers one to Kaito, who hasn’t actually finished his first, but sure, yeah, he’ll hold onto it, puts it on the table next to him for later. 

“Hey,” says Shark suddenly, “doesn’t she wear a skirt?”

“What?”

He motions to Kaito’s outfit.

Oh.

“No. Not really.”

Sip sip sip. Sip.

And on it goes, the both of them standing against the wall because they’ve no one else to hang out with, and having brief, disjointed conversations because they’ve nothing else to say — that is, until Shark yells a curse out of no where and tries to duck behind Kaito and the table, manages to push Kaito down instead, trips over himself, and lands on top of him. 

“What the fu—”

“Sssssh,” Shark says, putting a finger to Kaito’s lips, and he’s flushing, face red and eyes wide, but he’s also listening closely to someone that’s walking by—

—and when the footsteps are gone, he collapses in relief. “Phew. Gone.”

“Get _off_ me,” Kaito says, and pushes him away, but Shark’s reaction time isn't really on par so his head hits the edge of the table and there’s another stream of curses, and Kaito would feel bad, except he doesn’t at all. And he shouldn’t, anyway — Shark gets mad and pushes him back and they wrestle before they’re right back where they started, like under the table in the corner of his parents' basement, Shark is determined to snuggle Kaito to death, which—

—wait is he actually—

“Shark—”

“Ssh,” he says again, and the finger’s back to Kaito’s lips.

Speaking of lips—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAHAHAHAHA ROLLS OFF A CLIFF


	9. 3AM

Kaito wakes up around 3AM in Shark Kamishiro's bed.

He knows it’s 3AM because of the digital clock on the wall.

He knows it's Shark’s bed because he remembers his mouth being on Shark’s mouth. A lot. Which. Hnn. Was nice.

Sloppy, intoxicated making out that only ended with the discovery that Shark is a cuddly drunk.

Speaking of.

Kaito shoves Shark away. The piece of shit falls to the ground with a nice, loud thud. There’s an “ouch.” Then silence. Kaito peers down. Nudges at Shark’s body with his foot to make sure he’s still out.

No movement. Good. 

Kaito stumbles out of the bed. Realizes he really fricken has to pee.

Bathroom? Bathroom.

Holy hell, Shark threw up.

Kaito looks back at the bed.

Hnn.

…He should probably get home.

At 3AM?

...

Screw it. He’s going back to sleep.


	10. Here & There

_Knock knock._

“Ani!”

Wha…? Who—

“ _Ryoga_!”

—Ahh. Right.

_God._

It’s 7AM and there’s banging at the door, and Kaito opens his eyes and doesn’t know where he is—until he does. The sun’s just creeping in through the blinds in the alcove ( _really_ ) of Shark Kamishiro’s room, where Kaito’s curled up in bed and Shark’s still curled up on the floor from when Kaito pushed him the night before, and Shark’s twin sister is at the door, demanding that her smashed brother wake up before their parents get home.

Shark doesn’t stir; Kaito rubs at his eyes and sits, blinking in the morning light. He didn’t get a look at Shark’s room yesterday—or if he did, it wasn’t a particularly good one—but now in his sobriety he can notice all the posters and the absurdly huge plasma screen and the— _really_ —recording booth in the corner, and—

“Oh my god, RYOGA! You’re the most _useless_ older brother on the _planet_!”

Thiiiis isn’t the time to be thinking about Shark’s room’s set up.

“I don’t know why Mama and Papa don’t—”

Kaito opens the door.

“—kick… you… oh my _god_.”

“Hi,” says Kaito, sweating in his, um, sweater, with the jacket thrown over his shoulder. “I’m just gonna. Go.”

Rio opens her mouth to say something clever, he thinks, but what comes out instead is, “I can’t believe this.” A pause, and then: “ _You_?”

“Bye,” he says, and makes to leave, but she blocks him.

“Did you—”

“ _No_. No.”

And he’s gone.

* * *

Kaito Tenjo is a piece of shit.

He’s a piece of shit because last night he told Haruto he’d be home “later,” but he didn’t say that “later” meant the next morning (because he didn’t know it meant the next morning, thanks, and he didn’t know that Shark was good at the thing with his mouth, either), and when he pushes open the front door and shuts it closed behind him, who does he find but his dad—who presumably had to work from home in Kaito’s absence, lest Haruto be left alone.

“Kite,” starts Faker, to which Kaito thinks, “No,” but says, “...Morning,” and trudges upstairs before the old man can say anything. 

Haruto, at least, doesn’t know that Kaito was gone so long. From what Kaito pieces together, his little brother fell asleep on the sofa in anticipation of Kaito’s return, was carried to bed, and only wakes up an hour after Kaito’s return. They sort Haruto’s candy—a yield more impressive than ever before—while Faker hovers in the kitchen, and Kaito tries to act normal.

“How was the party?” Haruto asks.

Kaito’s not sure how much he wants to admit it.

“Nice,” he says, finally.

* * *

When school starts up two days after Halloween, Kaito fully expects Shark not to talk him; maybe even to have packed up his posters and his recording booth and moved out of town, his face red from the alcohol and red from the embarrassment, because, Kaito thinks, if _he’d_ been so drunk because his crush ditched him, if in his desperation _he’d_ made out with Shark and then cuddled the crap out of him, Kaito’d have to change his name (as it stands, Kaito was the object of cuddling and he doesn’t really have a reputation like Shark’s, so Kaito’s not anywhere near as embarrassed as he could be, even if No One Must Know).

But what actually happens is entirely different. Rather than despise the very air that Kaito dares to occupy, Shark, having recovered from the day before’s killer hangover, seems to have absolutely no recollection of what transpired the night prior, and, actually? Is in a really good mood. He doesn’t scowl at Kaito as much, and doesn’t move his desk three inches over when Kaito sits down at English, basically warms up to Kaito in general, which. Um.

This is unnatural. 

In English, Rio catches Kaito’s eye when he’s looking desperately in her direction for an answer; when Shark leaves before either of them after class, she walks over and explains, rolling her eyes, “He said he had a good dream but he can’t remember what it is. I think he thinks Yuma was in it.” Then she picks up her bag and leaves, and Kaito’s life continues to be a cosmic joke, but at least he knows that Shark Kamishiro doesn’t have a crush on him. Hopefully.

It’s just that they’re actually friends now, not through Yuma but through each other, which, y’know, isn’t bad.

(Plus Kaito totally saw the poster for _BENETNASCH_ behind Shark’s door and googled and Know Your Meme’d it yesterday and can you say “blackmail material”?)

Presently, they’re outside for lunch and Yuma pulls out a paper bag alongside his usual _bento_ and pours out the contents, all kinds of candy and chocolate spilling onto the ground and Kaito and Shark staring at it as Yuma shakes out even more, and endless stream of sugary goodness. “This,” Yuma says, looking either of them sternly in the eye, like he’s the principal and they’re rowdy middle schoolers in his office, “is what happens when you go trick-or-treating with me.”

“Mhm.” Kaito nods, takes one of Yuma’s Three Musketeers, peels back the wrapper, and plops it in his mouth. Shark is more outraged at this than Yuma, who sighs and pushes the pile in Shark’s direction for him to choose a treasure from the bounty, all of their actual lunches left forgotten.

“Oh, hey! Kaito hasn’t thanked me about Halloween yet!”

“I haven’t?” Kaito asks, to which Yuma shakes his head and crosses his arms, expectant. “Thanks for taking Haruto out, Yuma.”

“Not _that_ ,” says Yuma, waving his hand dismissively, like, _come on, Kaito, stop kidding around_ , and the way he grins and folds his hands then can only be described as cartoonish—Kaito can practically see the gleeful sparkles shimmering in Yuma’s eyes when he asks, “You had fun at Ryoga’s gig, riiiiiight?”

Kaito glances at Shark, who hasn’t reacted — so, wow, he really _doesn’t_ remember, and Rio really didn’t tell him, and he probably thinks that Kaito showed up and snarked at him and left. Which, you know, Kaito is totally okay with.

“Sure,” says Kaito, biting back his smirk. “Shark’s quite talented.”

That satisfies Yuma, and the party isn’t mentioned again. Instead, Yuma tells them how his night with Haruto went, so Kaito gets to hear the story about the aggressive pirate dad all over again, and this time the man is just a little shorter in stature and the candy received isn’t as good, but it’s still a funny story and pretty soon all three of them are cackling. Thing is, what Haruto left out of his retelling Yuma slips in by accident—the part where Haruto got kind of tired and Yuma got kind of tired, too, and the second Kaito hears that his face slips into a frown and Yuma waves his arms frantically, about how he doesn’t have to worry because they stopped at Kotori’s house to rest for a bit before they went home.

“We took pictures,” Yuma remembers suddenly, and looks wildly around for his phone, which disappeared earlier under the mountain of junk food. “Lemme send ‘em to you.”

“No phone,” Kaito reminds them, and Yuma groans.

“ _Still_?”

“Not like I’d use it much.”

“What do you even do all day, Kaito?”

“I…”

That’s… a pretty good question. After school, Kaito goes home and he eats the tiniest bit and then he checks if he’s at any risk of going into a coma or whatever before collapsing on the couch for a nap. Haruto usually wakes him up an hour later and they watch some TV together and Kaito helps Haruto with his homework while staring blankly at his own. Kaito ends up making dinner and eating right before his dad gets home, at which point he makes his escape with the excuse of assignments due tomorrow, but actually just lies in bed and stares at the ceiling or plays Pokémon or something. Thus accomplishing absolutely nothing of value each day, Kaito accomplishes absolutely nothing of value each night, either, gets ready for bed and eyes the mess that is his room, thinks _I should probably clean this tomorrow_ , and then doesn’t.

So. What does he do all day?

“...Nothing, really.”

“Kaito.” Yuma puts a hand on Kaito’s arm solemnly. “I think you need an intervention.”

Kaito draws himself back. “Do I?”

“You do,” presses Yuma, nodding to add effect. “And it starts with us finding your phone.”

“Before you turn into a total hermit,” adds Shark, whose concern is… sweet?

??

???

“I don’t even have a texting plan,” Kaito says. “Even if I did find it, what’s gonna happen? D’you two plan on calling me to talk about your crushes in the middle of the night?” 

He neglects to include ‘on each other,’ but the effect on Shark is as if he had. Good. 

“I didn’t know you were such a dirty gossip,” Shark remarks.

“Didn’t I tell you? I run the school’s gossip magazine.”

“Guys?”

“Don’t run bullshit about my sister and Shitgetsu.”

“Guys…”

“You actually _read it_?”

“Guys!” shouts Yuma, waving his arms around in front of their faces, “You’re doing the thing again.”

That shuts them both up. Yuma’s yet to tell them what exactly The Thing is—although in light of the weekend’s events, Kaito can wager, um, a guess—but neither of them are particularly keen on the subject since it involves the other.

“Anyway,” says Yuma, rubbing his hands together, “I know what we’re gonna do on Saturday.”

“I can’t—”

“No bailing, Kaito!”

“I have to—”

“You either, Ryoga.”

They both cross their arms and sigh.

“I think the most exciting adventure that we can have right now is….”

* * *

“...Cleaning Kaito’s room.”

“This,” says Shark, who arrived before Yuma and tried to play it down by loitering down the street, but failed when Haruto noticed him from the window and pointed it out to Kaito, “is the messiest dump I have ever seen in my life.”

“Some of us,” says Kaito, who agrees but can’t admit that aloud because that would be agreeing with Shark, and he can’t have that, “have more important things to focus on then keeping their room germ-free in case it might disgust their classmate.”

“Like this?” asks Shark, and before Kaito can turn to him, before he can even register that Shark’s picked something up from his desk and oh _god_ it’s that something, that specific something that should not be something but is totally something, the notebook with the galaxies on the cover and the burned out stars inside, “Don’t—”

Shark reads: 

Here comes  
the Monster—  
more Savage than a Supernova!  
with the CATACLYSMIC **FORCE**  
of **_T E N B L A C K H O L E S_** put together.  
a cosmic SCOURGE that  
VAPORIZES  
every                   thing  
in its                   path.

O  
Radiant  
Galaxy  
that lurks  
in the  
darkness.  
become  
the Striking Light  
of hope  
&  
of servitude.  
descend!  
here and now,  
onto  
me.

Slowly, Shark lowers the notebook.

A beat.

“Kaito.” 

Kaito keeps the eye contact. Shark tries, but it looks like he’s going to piss himself laughing, so it’s kind of difficult. If Kaito needed a picture to describe “shit-eating grin”...

“Shark.”

“You.”

“Me.”

“Write poetry.”

“I—”

“And that’s why you don’t hang out with us.”

“That’s,” says Kaito, and wants to say that it is really old, but wonders what exactly the definition of “old” would be here, considering that it’s from this year, just like everything else in that stupid freewriting diary of his, just like the letters to Chris and the letters to his mom, just like the responses to summer reading and hospital visits and everything else that he thought’d be a good idea to counter depression—

“Oh my _god_ ,” says Shark, wiping an invisible tear from his eye, except oh my god it’s not even invisible, Shark is legitimately crying, and Kaito tries not to look embarrassed because god dammit he’s not embarrassed except that he’s totally embarrassed, and Shark turns the page, and Kaito hopes to god that Shark can’t read his dumb katakana—” _Kurisu he_ ”—god DAMMIT.

“To Chris,” translates Shark, nodding like he understands. “Who’s _Chris_? Your boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Girlfriend?”

“ _No._ ” 

“You sure?”

“Chris,” says Kaito evenly, grasping at the strings that might finally pull Shark and him down to equal ground, “is as much my boyfriend as Yuma is yours.”

Which says a lot—says that if Shark has a crush on Yuma, then Kaito has one on Chris, which Shark will figure out once he reads maybe half a sentence on the page to which he’s turned. But here's the thing: as obvious as it is, Shark'll never _admit_ he has a crush on Yuma, so Kaito doesn't have a crush, either. 

Of course, Shark knows that Kaito knows about Shark's crush, so now Kaito knows that Shark knows about Kaito's crush, which is a roundabout way of give one to get one, but—

It's a strategic move.

"So not at all," surmises Shark, placing the book back on Kaito’s desk.

"Not at all," agrees Kaito, and they shake on it.

They both jump when the doorbell rings seconds later and Haruto calls up, "Niisan!" Kaito shouts back that he’ll get it and heads on over to open the door for Yuma; he expects Shark to follow him out of his room and come to greet their friend, but that doesn't happen and Kaito mutters fun little curses under his breath because wow does he not want Shark in his room alone after that, and _wow_ does he have more embarrassing things in there and wow does he not want Shark to be the one to find them, tacit agreement to hide each other's embarrassments or not.

So much for that blackmail.

Yuma’s already inside when Kaito goes to get him; Faker ended up opening the door and letting him in, and Yuma, one hand holding tight to the strings of his drawstring, is having what looks like an actual decent conversation when Kaito stops halfway down the stairs and calls his name.

"Hey,” Kaito says, waving him over. “C'mon up, Shark's already going through my stuff."

So Yuma thanks Faker and comes up and Kaito slams his door open, welcoming Yuma to his, uh, humble? abode. It greets them with five different piles of laundry and about seven piles of papers and books, hair brushes and hair gel and hair dye and towels by his mirror, which could use some Windex because when Kaito looks into it, he might as well be looking into a fog. There's two or three boxes of comic books and video games, and two more filled with all the wires that come with all the systems that used to be hooked up to the TV but aren't any longer, tangled up together no matter how much care Kaito took when originally putting them in. His closet is wide open and his clothes are sliding off the hangers, his drawers are pulled out and they're either overflowing with stuff he’s thrown this way or that or full of his stupid collections of Duel Monsters cards and other things from childhood he's yet to throw away; on his nightstand, there’s a single lamp flanked by three bottles of water and five imprints from glasses, because Kaito lost his coaster.

“Wow,” says Yuma, because seeing is believing.

Kaito doesn’t say “I told you so”; he’s watching Shark, who’s going through a box of Kaito’s games.

"Final Fantasy VII? Really?"

Kaito snatches it from Shark's hands, and slips it into a drawer on his nightstand. "Yeah, really. It's worth about one-hundred and ten more dollars than you."

"So you're saying I'm priceless."

"I'm saying no one would want to buy you if I put you on eBay."

"You were considering pimping me?"

"Hi, Ryoga!" says Yuma, before that conversation can carry on, and Kaito has the distinct feeling that they were doing the thing again. “Hey, Yuma,” replies Shark, who’s in an even better mood today than he was on Tuesday, so either the stick perpetually up his butt has taken the day off work, or Shark’s given it a vacation since he saw Kaito’s stupid poetry. “‘Sup?”

“Stars,” points out Yuma, who’s noticed Kaito’s ceiling. Shark follows Yuma's gaze up to the roof, where Kaito maybe sorta kinda okay fine yeah has those plastic, neon glow-in-the-dark stars hung in pinks and blues and that weird light-greenish color, old and stuck to the pasty white paint with the little gum. There's little glow-in-the-dark planets, too; and maybe Shark and Yuma won't notice but it's all actually accurate, as much of the night sky and its constellations that Kaito can set up, there's Ursa Major and Dubhe and Alkaid, Phecda and Megrez and Merak and Alioth. Mizar and Alcor.

Kaito expects a snark, a comment, something stupid, readies himself to come up with a good snappy response, but instead of anything dumb, Shark just says, "Whoa."

“Yeah… well… uh, better get to work.”

So while his friends are marveling at something that’s lost its charm for him, Kaito starts picking things up… and then puts them down again, stares blankly at the sea of junk that they have to sort through and thinking about how hopeless it is for them to get this done in a day—or to get it done at all.

Something comes flying at his face. “Hey,” says Shark who’s taken to stacking Kaito’s games in a box he’s emptied, “no slacking off.”

Kaito grunts in response and resumes collecting his socks—until Shark’s turned away, and Kaito bundles five socks into a ball and throws them at Shark’s back.

So it’s _on_.

Basically? They make Kaito's room much, _much_ worse than before. What was scattered piles of junk ends up being a storm of crap in every corner, a carpet that Kaito no longer remembers the color of, and three teenage boys (but mostly Shark and Kaito) fighting, ducking for cover behind Yuma when they can, and then being betrayed by their own ally. Flying socks and wires and Star Wars underwear, pillows and sheets and basically anything that presumably won’t cause blunt force trauma. They only stop when Kaito grips around idly for something under the bed to ricochet off the wall and land on Shark's head, and ends up grabbing something solid of which he recognizes the shape. Kaito's eyes widen as he withdraws and stares at his Nokia, the old blue and grey thing with barely a caller ID and the keyboard that uses T9.

"Hey, what's that?"

"I… found it," says Kaito, and presses the power button, although he's sure that the battery's long past dead. Still, it is a Nokia…

The black screen glints with a lightning bolt. It still works. Needs juice…

"Should I throw things at you again? Do you think I'll accidentally hit you with the charger?"

"No," says Kaito. "I know where that is."

Yuma looks around the room, where nothing is where it once was and probably never will be again. "Really?"

Kaito nods. He wades through the piles of video games that fell when Yuma tripped over the box and all his clothes and his papers and his books and his comics—including that one that Shark totally ripped and Kaito would get mad if he cared at all for the New 52 so much—and goes to his nightstand, where the lonely lamp still guards his diary. He pulls open the drawer, the only kept neat and organized, and Yuma and Shark peer over his shoulders.

This is the drawer with all the stuff that matters. This is where Kaito keeps his keys and his wallets and his notebook, a pencil and an eraser and a pen. His medicine, his glucometer. Three copies of Galaxy-Eyes Photon Dragon (there was one more, a piece of his heart that kept him up when he was down, the last birthday present he got from his mom: the card he gave to Yuma). The picture that he stole from his dad's office. A few pieces of caramel. And one charger, which he knew he would need later, so kept it there for safe-keeping.

Kaito plugs his phone into the same outlet as the lamp and lets it sit. When he glances back, Yuma's taking a better look into the drawer, which Kaito probably should've shut.

"Kaito, whoa..."

"What is it?" He hopes this isn’t about the picture.

"Those… Galaxy-Eyes, you, I mean…"

"Three, yeah. So it was okay for you to keep one."

"Do you have a full deck?"

"I don't play."

"But,” presses Yuma, “you do have a deck?"

" _No_ , I don't have a deck, because I don't play.” He pushes the drawer shut and stands in front of it like a guard. “Why would I have a deck for a game I don't play?"

"But you _could_ make a deck," Yuma insists, staring at him meaningfully. "You have all the cards and stuff you need right here in your room?"

"Yeah, but..."

"C’mon, Kaito," says Shark, who’s snapped back to attention since Kaito shut the drawer again. "You’ve got, like, half the first two generations in here. Forgot how to build or something? Want me to make a deck for you? Photons are pathetic, right, same combo every time?"

Kaito realizes that he’s being bullied and peer pressured by a fifteen- and a sixteen-year-old, one with a big dumb grin and the other with a big stupid smirk, but there's something about the way that Shark says _that_ , the way that he disses Photons that resonates within him, reminds him of a boy sitting on the floor opposite him at New Year’s parties, reminds him of a woman with a smile that dimpled on her right cheek just like Haruto's, reminds him of her challenging him and beating him every time, _come on, Niisan, how are you going to save your baby brother from the champion like that?_ , and Kaito pulls open his drawer so hard it almost falls out, swipes up his three Galaxy-Eyes and the deck that's still perfectly in-tact inside its deck box—because he'd found it earlier and didn't want it thrown around—and holds it up like a badge.

"I don't need your help.”

"Pants on fire," decides Shark.

"Good," says Yuma, grinning, and he pulls the drawstring bag off his back. "Because I have mine."

"And some of us talk outside of school, too," says Shark, (un)coolly, and magically manages to get a deck box to appear in his hand, too.

"Triangle?"

"I don't know, Kaito, do you still remember how to play?"

"2v1 then, right, Yuma?"

Yuma grins. "Let’s all kattobingu!"

* * *

Kaito forgot how to play.

Like, hey, no—he remembers the _rules_ , okay, but he doesn’t remember how his deck works, because he forgot that his Photon deck is also a Galaxy deck, he forgot how to swarm with it; he forgot how to summon GEPD, and he forgot when he retains ATK boosts and when he doesn't. Galaxy Knight, he decides, is annoying; it loses its attack on a Tribute-less normal summon regardless of fetching a GEPD—which, stupid. 

At least Galaxy Knight’s level 8, because that makes it good NGEPD fodder. Except that when Kaito does _that_ , he forgets that Yuma has a Hope out on his field, and Hope loses his units, which they were planning on using for defense later. 

Basically, Kaito totally screws up their entire game. 

"I remember this game being less absurdly complicated," Kaito mutters.

"You remembered wrong," says Shark, and he motions for Yuma to switch seats with him. “Play again?”

And they do, again and again until they’ve hit all possible combinations and Kaito has lost the maximum number of times, because it’s not about winning. There was this pull when they started that made Kaito frown at first, but now he gets it. It's the same rush that he used to know as a kid, the feel of addiction and of wanting to be better and wanting to be the best, the feel of… well, as stupid as it sounds, strengthening bonds between friends that the anime still raves about all the time. Maybe it's a placebo, maybe it's bonding over the dumb, ridiculously complicated rules that require googling card erata and rulings too often; maybe it's the way Yuma and Shark and Kaito keep disagreeing on the chain order. Whatever it is, it's nice. 

Kaito's room doesn't get cleaned that day. Not entirely, anyway; when Yuma and Shark leave and Kaito's voice is hoarse from laughing and his face is tired from smiling, he goes upstairs and looks at the mess and, yeah, okay, he can't let this one slide by. His sides ache but his mood is okay, and Kaito picks up some of his things. Shuffles his comics into a box (even the one that Shark ripped), draws up his clothes and puts them all together in a corner. Makes a little pathway to his closet, where he rips all his things off the hangers and throws them in the pile, too. Stuffs the box inside his closet. Nods at it, and closes the door. One thing at a time. Underwear in underwear drawer, not exactly neatly, but in it. Same for his socks. Unpaired, but together.

When he's tired, he climbs onto his bed and closes his eyes for a second before staring at the stars on his ceiling. His bed is more comfortable today than he remembers it being, but everything today is more comfortable and more bright, and maybe things aren't so bad, you know? _Kattobingu da_ , Yuma said, and Kaito still hasn't asked him what it means (mostly because he doesn't want to face the embarrassment if it's a common word, though it doesn't sound like one, is it just a new noun form of "ganbaru"?), but… Kaito can feel that word butterfly around him. 

Today he is happy.

Right after he realizes that, his phone turns on, vibrating in a soft purr to let him know that it's awake, that it's back in business. Kaito realizes suddenly that he hasn't even exchanged numbers with Yuma and Shark yet, but the venture was successful, at least, and he can do that on Monday. Haruto'll be happy to hear tomorrow, at least.

Kaito yawns, pulls up his blanket, and closes his eyes to sleep.

But then his phone vibrates again. And again. And again.

Huh. Probably Yu—

—No, it can’t be him. So who...?

Kaito reaches for the phone, his heart pounding as he remembers something.

_"You know you'll save money if you just get the plan, right?" "Shut up."_

Kaito has 62 messages. They're all from Chris.


	11. $12.40

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY! I put up a [dossier](http://adreus.dreamwidth.org/16933.html) at DreamWidth with some helpful stuff like the age chart and some of my notes if you're confused/interested in trivia!
> 
> aaaaanyway. here. we. GO!

Twelve dollars and forty cents.

That is how much money Christopher Arclight owes him.

Kaito squints into the dim light and tries to read; it’s hard to do when his hands and his heart and his being all start to tremble with cold bleakness and fear, sixty-two messages from Christopher Arclight in varying degrees of anger and of sage advice and of sadness, because the guy apparently doesn't know how to quit, not after one day, not after two weeks, not even after three whole months, and sixty-two messages over eighty-seven days is nearly 1:1, a spare thought from Chris to Kaito almost every single day.

Kaito’s mad because _sixty-two, is that really necessary_ , and Kaito’s laughing because Christopher Arclight sure is a _person_ ; and then there is, after his more extreme reactions, the quiet sobriety of swallowing and curling up to himself and actually reading them. A soft flutter of affection because Chris cared enough. Kaito hasn’t responded to a single message since August, but Chris kept sending them anyway, _hi, hello, I know you’re still alive, asshole_.

Chris’s texts have always been awkwardly pedantic, pretentious, and punctuated—like he thought too long about whether to use a comma or a semi-colon or an emdash, looked up that word in the dictionary to make sure he used it completely correctly—so their conversations used to go slowly, but they would go, and they were, y’know, nice. Not enough texts to warrant a plan because they were so spread out, this stupid college guy who texted back years later with “sorry, fell asleep,” so Kaito’s phone bill had already rolled over, but, well, a decent amount. So…

Kaito’s phone is old enough that it doesn’t have conversation view yet, so he scrolls all the way down the list and opens the oldest message first, marked August 12th, 2011 — the day after Chris came over and blew up at him for being a bum and not seizing the day or whatever. It’s timestamped 1:01AM—so apparently Chris thought about it all night, couldn’t sleep or couldn’t let it go in the hours of the morning when people are raw and real.

It says:

[ _I spent a lot of time thinking about what happened today, and I apologize. The things I said were unwarranted. It wasn't my place._ ]

Kaito stares at it. Stares it some more and his face breaks out into a stupid grin at the familiarity of it and he laughs, laughs so much under his blankets that he ends up into a fit of cackles, something that Shark would probably just describe as giggling, and he nearly chokes, because he never responded, so the next one, twelve hours later to the dot, says:

[ _...You're ignoring me._ ]

And the one after:

[ _That's awfully childish of you, Kaito. You're starting to sound like my brother._ ]

(Chris called Kaito his brother once, said he missed his own very much—they were back in Canada, and Chris was feeling kind of homesick without Mihael and the dog and maybe even Thomas, _have I ever told you about the time he_ , and—thoughts, thoughts, Kaito breaks into laughter again, he's been angry and grumpy all this time and _sixty-two messages_ —)

What follows include texts of just the word "Kaito," Chris typing it out and Kaito reading it in the weird way that only Chris ever says his name, not quite able to pronounce it but not quite saying it like an Amurrican, either. Kaito remembers Chris's mouth struggling the first time he tried for "Tenjo," for "Tenjo Kaito," for "Kurisu Akuraito," and hey, doesn't "Arclight" rhyme with "Kaito" when you say it Japanese?

What follows includes life lessons and some spiel about sadness and _you're being a child_ ; includes _maybe it's my fault_ and apologies and everything else; includes so many swings in mood and ideas and it reminds him that Chris isn't exactly an adult, either, that Chris is and has been his friend, hasn't he?

What follows is "you're not reading this anyway so let me tell you in thrilling detail about the coffee I had this morning" (even though Kaito hates coffee), what follows is, " _but you didn't have to cut me off_ " (even though Kaito hates Gotye), what follows is so not Chris and yet so actually-Chris and so just _Chris_ , and it culminates with, "That froyo should've covered the expenses, Kaito, so when you find your phone I expect a fifteen page paper on _Case Studies in Interpersonal Communication: How Not to Break Up with Your Boyfriend_ on my desk in LA, double-spaced, one inch margins, Times New Roman, 12-point font."

And at that very last one, he stops laughing. Everything sort of stops.

By the time he's finished reading, it's 1AM on a Sunday night, and Kaito's staring at his phone, staring at the ceiling, shaking.

He read it wrong. He has to have.

He shakes his head and closes his eyes, opens them and reads it again, curling into himself a second time, and the blankets slipped onto the floor a while ago when he was laughing so much, and now he holds the phone closer to his face, its light green and other worldy and strange.

"Boyfriend?" he says, and right then and there it's the most foreign word he's ever said, can't quite get his tongue to form it right, it's another language, another place and time, another person—"Boyfriend."

Some time passes, and he's not sure how much. He reads it again. The same text over and over. Reads the old ones. Thinks, twelve dollars and forty cents. Sixty-two messages. All of them weird, and strange, fresh and new with the last one in mind. But all of them from Chris.

He sets his phone in his drawer next to his deck and his three Galaxy-Eyes, and misses the fourth one. He pulls the covers over his head and his hands on his face, feeling everything and feeling nothing at all, nothing but the word over and over again, _boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend_. He tries to sleep. _Boyfriend._ Tries to sleep. _How Not to Break Up with Your Boyfriend_. Tries to sleep. _Boyfriend._

* * *

“I don’t remember him being my boyfriend.”

If he tried to sleep at 1:47AM, Kaito is up at 3:21AM so suddenly that it's like his heart tried to leap out of his chest. And maybe that's what happened.

Sitting on the counter next to the sink downstairs and downing the orange juice straight from the quart, Kaito pricks his finger with a needle and sets it into the glucometer and would laugh if he didn't feel so weak. He sure is good at taking care of himself. 70. He'd been doing so good he'd almost forgotten about the entire thing.

The pill he took before he fell asleep was ruthless in getting its revenge, he guesses. Kaito was so all over the place today that he ended up making a dumb miscalculation, and here he is now, desperately downing the juice and trying not to feel like death, which his difficult when his vision swims in his lightheadedness and everything smells orange, and in his faded company T-shirt and the jeans he'd yet to change out of, he's so uncomfortable and so tired and so—so— 

Tired is the only word, really. Tired, because this stupid thing is permanent, isn't it? What's the average lifespan for men now, seventy years? Kaito doesn't know how long he plans on living or when an earthquake will take him or whatever it is but that's double, triple how long he's been alive so far, and he's only had this stupid disorder for a few months and he's already so, so tired of it, tired of it in his bones and in his mind and in his heart, because not only is it exhausting to live with, it's almost like—it _is_ like—

Well, it wasn't Kaito's problem. It was Haruto's. Haruto who was in the accident, Haruto who nearly lost his legs, Haruto who's miraculously lived and started walking again, and _Kaito_ , dramatic and overzealous, took it so much to heart, worried so much about his younger brother, that he was the one who ended up with the permanent damage. Took something about Haruto and selfishly made it about him. And it's—it's not like Kaito did it himself, but his body did, and he's mad at it, so mad, because it's not fair to _Haruto_.

It's just… frustrating, so frustrating, because so, yeah, maybe Kaito has always been a magnet for catching a cold or whatever, but he's also always been physically fit, always had a healthy diet, always done this and done that and taken care of himself, and it was just that week—that shock, that stress, and that worry—that triggered something permanent. That was all it took. One stupid mistake, one unholy accident, one failed test and one failure of a father, two broken boys.

Kaito still misses his mom.

He'd… almost stopped, in the middle, except "stopped" isn't the right word because you don't just stop missing your mom, it was more like the pain had sort of subsided, he'd gotten used to it, it was okay; it'd been five years, right, he was 17 now and the Kaito that lost his mother was 12. He'd done most of his growing up without her, gone to high school in the public system, lived with their dad, who Kaito didn't like out of principle but Haruto seemed to be fine with him, and maybe he was sort of getting used to it, even if he wouldn't say he was totally happy. He spent a lot of time reading books, studying, keeping his eyes on space; her heart was in the stars, because that was her passion and her profession, and so he fell in love with it, too. Galaxies, Photons; his mom bought him the cards just before Haruto was born, and they played together, mother and son. It was their game at first (before he told Mizael about it) and she always beat him, except when she didn't, but sort of won anyway because Kaito _was_ her, he was a part of her, or whatever it was that she'd always say.

Kaito's mom was Japanese, and Kaito's dad is some flavor of vanilla that Kaito would be thrilled not to hear all the details about. Before she died, Kaito was just American, maybe Asian American where it mattered, had the values instilled him, _you'll take care of me when you're older, won't you?_ , but he could barely speak her language and he definitely couldn't read it, could write his name and Haruto's and the word "brothers" and that's pretty much it. But... ever since she left, he's always… he's always wanted to keep something separate from his father; his father, the scapegoat and the source of resentment, _why do you get to stay when she doesn't_ , and that's when Kaito started actually caring, that's when he became _Kaito, and don't you dare say Kite_ , a nickname that he didn't mind when he was younger, but now, yeah, he sort of does.

He started to learn. He wanted to learn all about everything, all about himself; but the thing is that she herself was second-generation, and Haruto barely remembers her, anyway, and Kaito’s skin is white as snow, so is any Asianness of Kaito's even his to claim? Is there a point to being so possessive of it?

She died, and that's how Kaito got through it, blamed his dad and stuck to what was purely maternal, things that his dad couldn't lay a hand on no matter what. But in a way it was stupid, what was the point of being so obsessed with Japanese _now_ , when he used to be so apathetic to Mizael’s trilingualism before?

It got… easier, at least, as the time passed. He sort of let his grudge go. He got okay. Slowly, he opened up and he was okay with Dad, little-by-little, stopped hating him so much. But it was one of those happier days that it happened. Faker and Haruto were the ones to drop Kaito off to take the SAT; halfway through, during his break, Kaito got the text message.

Car crash. Again.

Kaito blamed himself. Kaito blamed his dad. Kaito took it to heart, just like he had before. And he sort of relapsed. And that's how they ended up where they are, and yet…

Haruto looks happy. Haruto looks fine. Haruto is smiling and he's walking again. Kaito's the dumb one, Kaito's depressed and diabetic and unmotivated, even though it's been five years since his mom died and five months since Haruto’s accident. Even though Kaito should be fine now.

His eyes catch his phone, sitting on the table because he was holding onto it when he climbed down, didn't let it go.

He bites his lip, knits his brow. There's a calm that sets about his chest as his blood levels sort of settle, a coolness over his heart as he thinks back on today. Shark, Yuma. _They_ make him feel okay, don't they? They're his friends. And he's only ever had three of those before, and one of them was his mom, so… she probably doesn't count.

"…Boyfriend."

How many times has he said it, how many times has he thought it, and there’s a lump in his throat and his heart sort of does those stupid loop-de-loops again and he stares at the phone and tilts his head, hoping in the stupidest of hopes at 3:46AM that Christopher Arclight the college sophomore will call him. Call him, even now, after all these months that Kaito hasn't said a word to him, call him at this hour on this specific day, call him when all that time they used to text, and Kaito thinks he kind of wants to die a little, when did he become like—like—like _Shark_? 

3:48AM. Maybe he should go back to sleep now.

3:51. Boyfriend.

3:53. What does it mean to be a boyfriend, anyway? They've never, like, done anything, Chris is two years older than him, too, they barely even see each other, most of their conversation took place online, and so maybe he—he Sharks him, but he doesn't think he's ever said that. No, yeah, he's definitely never said that, and he'd like to think that he didn't show it on his face, either. How many times has Yuma complained that Kaito is so stoic, that even Shark gets angry often enough to be considered otherwise?

3:55. When do college guys sleep? Does Chris, like, party? Would Kaito catch him like, drunk or something, if he called?

3:56. Does Chris drink? 

3:57. Kaito used to drink in his expression a lot.

3:58. Kaito needs to stop composing desperate poetry in his head.

3:59.

4:00. He picks up his phone just to feel the weight of it in his hand, to have something to play with as he sits on the counter in his kitchen in the dark on a Sunday night in November.

4:03. There's the dial tone. He doesn't have the number memorized, not yet. End Call.

4:05. To the contacts list…

4:08.

4:10. _I hope you have a general exam tomorrow and I make you fail._

4:12. "Kaito?" Oh, god.

"Chris." He sounds like a nervous eleven-year-old. No, that's insulting to Haruto. He sounds like Shark.

"I can't believe this," the voice on the other end says, and the breathing is deep and his voice is tired and, yeah, Chris was totally asleep, whoops. "Do you know what time it is?"

"You're in college," Kaito points out, "your schedule's supposed to be screwed up."

"It’s not _that_ screwed up," Chris says, but it's not a chastisement or a mumble, just a fact, and there's some shifting in sheets and some creaks as Chris gets up and presumably leaves his dorm room. "Wow," he says then, as Kaito kind of stands there in the kitchen and wonders what exactly he planned to say to Chris, anyway, "I can't believe you actually called me. Now."

"I found my phone," says Kaito, which sounds really stupid because, _duh_.

"You did," agrees Chris. "At four in the morning."

Kaito suspects that Chris wants an apology for that. He doesn't really want to give it to him.

"So," says Chris then, "what has you requiring my services at four in the morning on a Sunday?"

"'Boyfriend,'" Kaito blurts out, and then winces.

"Ah?"

"No, I mean—Wait a minute."

Kaito puts down the phone and recaps the orange juice and puts it in the fridge and packs up his glucometer and turns off the dim kitchen lights and stares at his cell phone where Chris is calling, "Hello? Kaito?", then shakes his head and squints out the door, fresh air, right, nevermind how early it is, and he opens the door and steps outside and sits on the stairs, looks up at the sky that's mostly empty for all the light- and city- pollution, but he can still make out Mizar and Alcor, still see them and know it's them instead of planes, and that's calming, too. "I lost my phone in August," he explains, then, and tells Chris about how he threw his phone down in a fit of anger that day and how it ended up under his bed but he hadn't known it was under his bed, how it was gone so long after that and how he didn't notice and so how it ran out of battery, how his room is just as if not more of a mess than his life. Tells Chris how he's met up with Yuma as Kazuma wanted and how they became friends and Chris sounds like he knew that but just kind of listens to Kaito talk, Kaito who hasn't heard himself speak so much in so long that he barely recognizes his voice anymore, Kaito who tells him about Yuma and about Shark whose name is Ryoga but it should be Rye-oh-guh, just tells him. Tells him about how he went to a party on Halloween (but, um, doesn’t tell him about what happened there). Tells him about how they had a fight with all his things and they found his phone and they found his Duel Monsters cards and Chris didn't even knew Kaito played and couldn't Kaito show him sometime, and Kaito says all that, and then he takes a breath and says in a small voice at 5:00AM on a Sunday morning, "And then I read your texts."

"Oh? And?"

"Twelve dollars and forty cents."

"What?"

"That's how much you owe me. The froyo didn't cover it."

"I'll take you out again some time."

"I didn't know you were my boyfriend."

"No, I don't think you did."

"Well, you weren't. ...Were you?"

"Did you want me to be?"

"Stop that. Tell me what you meant."

"We're friends, Kaito, and we're boys. Boyfriends. Right?"

"I'm not some fob."

"I guess I sort of wish we were," the voice is soft and steady and smiling. "I thought you did, too."

There's rustling in the bushes in the neighbor's yard, and Kaito squints at it. His ears are warm from the phone being at them so long, him switching left to right to left again when his hands started getting tired, and his eyes are red and dry for lack of sleep. 

"Were you… retroactively asking me out?"

"Maybe," Chris says, and Kaito won't accept that.

"It's a yes-or-no question, Christopher."

"Is your answer yes or no, Ka- _i_ -to?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "[Fob](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresh_off_the_boat)"?


	12. Dreams & Reality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GRAVITY WALK NOW COMES WITH THESE SECOND-HAND EMBARRASSMENT GLASSES (WAVES THEM AROUND) THAT YOU CAN WEAR ON YOUR FACE THAT NARROW YOUR VISION SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ THROUGH YOUR FINGERS

"No," says Shark, when Kaito comes to the table that Monday and apparently sits too close to him while actually being the same distance he always is, but Shark is weird and Kaito is too tired to say something witty, so he just scoots down a little and stares at his hands, because, yeah, his head has been somewhere else most of today, too.

On Sunday morning, Kaito cleaned his room. It's not like he could've gone back to sleep—not after his conversation with Chris, not after staying up the rest of the night (morning?), not after counting every one of his stupid heart beats, and matching each one up to every adhesive star. They had the nerve to glow brighter on Sunday; as dawn crept into the room, he remembered suddenly that they thrived off light exposure, and that absence was probably why they’d grown so faint to begin with. 

He’s thinking about taking them off.

Kaito has read and re-read Chris’s texts maybe, like, two hundred times now, manually scrolled and scrutinized every word Chris ever said, and then filed through his own responses separately, in a different menu. Conversation view? What’s that? Kaito hadn’t bothered upgrading to that luxury, so everything’s disjointed; he only remembers the context of a few of their conversations, which are all kind of dry after—well, you know. And Kaito has, apparently, always been this boring:

[ _How you like California?_ ]

[ _I’m fine. High school’s boring._ ]

[ _Picking up Haruto._ ]

[ _Shut up._ ]

[ _Like I’d ever let you._ ]

[ _No..._ ]

[ _Uh, gross?_ ]

[ _Christopher._ ]

[ _I'm not answering that._ ]

[ _Shouldn't you be asleep?_ ]

[ _Chris. That’s a rice ball._ ]

...And yet.

[ _You whine about your dad all you want; your laundry is free._ ]

[ _Did you know that male snakes have tiny arms to hold their mates close while they’re having sex. You do now._ ]

[ _What exactly is YOUR position on the planetary status of Pluto, anyway?_ ]

[ _GE requirements continue to be terrible. Why so pale and wan, fond lover?_ ]

[ _They have sushi at the dining hall today. [pic]_ ]

[ _HELLA_ ]

[ _I expect a fifteen page paper on “Case Studies in Interpersonal Communication: How Not to Break Up with Your Boyfriend” on my desk in LA, double-spaced, one inch margins, Times New Roman, 12-point font._ ]

Kaito is boring; Kaito is depressed and angry, and all he does is wallow in self-pity, and his hair never sits right and his skin is always dry, his face pale and wan (will, when looking well can’t move him, looking ill prevail?). Kaito always texts late and then only one or two words, and Chris asked him out anyway. Asked him out as a boyfriend, as a partner, someone who Chris might even possibly—Kaito’s hands are shaking as he looks down at them under the table—Shark. He might Shark him.

"Hellllo? Kaito? Earth to Kaito, we're still in high school, don't space out on me yet!"

Kaito blinks up to a hand waving in his face, and Yuma right above him, grinning at his own joke. “Hey,” says Yuma, “you’re back! How was it up on the moon?”

“What?” Kaito totally zoned out in the middle of lunch.

“It was a joke,” says Yuma, his mouth pulling down into a frown, and he sighs, looks at Shark, looks at Kaito, and, defeated, slumps back in his chair. “You guys are both so _weird_ today. Boooring.”

“What’s wrong with Shark?”

“I dunno,” Yuma groans. “He barely talked to me in class. Now he’s just doing homework or something.”

That’s… weird. Not only because it’s _Shark_ , but because, um, “We didn’t have homework this weekend.”

At this Yuma’s eyes grow wide and he pouts, and it’s clear that he’s sincerely upset, like he’s afraid he’s done something to offend his partner—but as quick as it came, Yuma’s vulnerability dissolves into him crossing his arms and glaring at Shark. Glares don’t really suit Yuma, though, so in the end it just looks kind of cute. “Ryoga!”

Shark grunts in response, drops his book, and reveals the phone that he’s been playing with behind it. Yuma throws out his arms and gives up, dropping his head onto the table and staring at his own phone, ticking the time away until next period. Yuma, Kaito notes, is being weird today, too… did something happen between the two of them? Kaito wouldn’t have the energy to care, really, but seeing the hurt in Yuma’s face...

“Shark?”

“Don’t talk to me.”

Well. He tried.

Kaito shrugs. _Sorry, Yuma_ , he thinks, and pulls out his own phone under the table. He’s the full intention of pretending it has something remotely interesting on it by scrolling through the menus and his contact list and maybe rereading Chris’s messages a million more times, but he’s spared the act—he’s got an actual message.

His throat constricts and he steps into his world of butterflies and flutterflies, opens it but doesn’t actually read it because he gets so stressed out about what he’s _going_ to read that his eyes kind of glaze over and he has to shut them and relax and breathe and then Kaito clears his vision and looks down at the dirty screen and reads:

[ _hey kaito. it’s miza. what’s up?_ ]

...And he’s all sorts of confused.

Mizael?

That was unexpected.

When was the last time he talked to his cousin? Kaito can’t remember; he and Mizael drifted apart after Kaito’s mom died, after Faker came to take Kaito and Haruto away from their aunt and uncle and to Heartland. It’s weird, actually; for how close Kaito and Mizael were as kids, always playing games and writing letters in the mail and having deep conversation the likes of which only children can have around Independence Day bonfires, Kaito hasn’t properly said a word to his cousin in five years. They’ve seen each other, it’s not like they haven’t — Kaito has Mizael’s number because of the weekend he and Haruto spent at the Longs’ when Faker had a business trip to go on, and Mizael was in the same Robotics program as Kaito before he graduated — but they don’t… speak. Or… Kaito doesn’t feel particularly inclined to.

Mizael finished high school when he was sixteen years old; graduated with honors and a full ride to some fancy university in Boston that Kaito can’t pronounce the name of; Mizael is fluent in English and Japanese and Chinese and Spanish and probably a whole slew of other languages that’ll help him in the future; Mizael has and always _has_ had a perfect GPA, and he was on the archery team, too, all these things that Mizael does and did and Mizael is good at and Kaito is a depressed seventeen-year-old who dropped out of Robotics, nearly failed the eleventh grade, and can barely pronounce his mother’s name.

So forgive Kaito if he doesn’t want to answer. It’s not Mizael’s fault — that’s not what he’s saying, Mizael isn’t some sort of bad guy, but he’s everything that Kaito is not, luck on the side of Dragluon; Mizael is happy and accomplished with two loving parents and a kitten and thinking about Mizael just makes Kaito feel even worse.

So he deletes the message.

The bell rings, and the boys pack their things and shuffle out of the cafeteria with half-hearted see you laters to Yuma. Shark is still acting the weirdest of all of them; the walk to their class is usually together, but today Shark shoulders his half-open bag and heads off so fast he trips and his books and papers land everywhere and he can’t get back up until the rush has died down and Kaito stops and holds out his hand, which Shark scowls at and refuses in order to pick up his things first.

Kaito shakes his head and stoops down to help. "Did Yuma ask you out yet?”

"What do you think?"

There’s the late bell.

"Never mind," says Kaito, standing up and offering Shark his things.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Shark asks conversationally, snatching them and stuffing them into his bag.

"I could ask you the same thing," Kaito goes, and once the backpack is zipped, Kaito offers his hand again, which Shark takes with a bone-crushing grip, and the two of them glare at each other, Kaito because Shark is an asshole, Shark probably because he is Shark, and there’s a tension in the air of which Kaito doesn’t understand the source. All _he_ can really think about, even now, is Chris; glaring at Shark is just sort of automatic.

A teacher shows up behind them, and she doesn't look very pleased. In a stern voice, she commands, "If it's your lunch period, boys, get to lunch."

And Kaito and Shark stare at each other, stare at their interlinked hands and then Shark jumps and lets go, and they’ve both got something to say to the other, don’t they; so they say their okays to the teacher and head back into the cafeteria, to a table in the corner by the vending machines and the trash cans, and they sit opposite each other, arms crossed. Then they realize they're both doing the same thing and so they drop it; and when they do that in sync, too, Kaito crosses his arms and Shark tents his hands, and they narrow their eyes at each other and, finally, Kaito says, "You first."

“You know what you did,” Shark says, making a face.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Shark growls. He has a fang and it's actually real, Kaito notices, which would be. Cute. If Shark weren’t so _frustrating_ to deal with.

“For real,” says Kaito, “I have no idea what I did to offend you so much. Breathe too much air?”

“You seriously don’t know?” asks Shark, and it isn’t cheeky; it’s actually a question, careful and curious. Kaito shakes his head.

They maintain the eye contact, but neither of them speaks. A second teacher approaches them — a substitute, from the look on his face, bored and annoyed and stressed out because of all the freshman that've decided to skip out on lunch inside today, snuck out into the outside world. He opens his mouth to speak, and Kaito says, "Kaito" and Shark says, "Ryoga Kamishiro" and the guy looks at them like "lol what can you repeat that" but they both glare at him and he is a weenie who gets scared by high schoolers, so he goes, "Right, yes, Cato and Ryan, I'll write that down," and backs off, probably thinking that it's them who'll get in trouble for it, anyway.

Kaito offers, "Duel for it?"

"...You brought your deck?"

"I, uh, thought Yuma might ask."

And so out their cards come, and so goes their duel, Kaito and Shark, neither willing to go first because they have to gauge whose tale is worse and who then gets to downgrade or upscale their own in response, and apparently Shark spent the entirety of Sunday playing around with his deck and making it actually useful where Kaito spent the entirety of Sunday thinking about how much he hates Chris (not much), so Shark wins within six minutes and Kaito scowls and wants to call for a rematch, but he doesn't, choosing instead to pull out his phone and stare at it again before Shark kicks him under the table. Kaito stomps on his foot.

" _Hey_ ," Shark growls under his teeth, "I _won_ , asshole. Quit stalling."

"I already asked what I wanted to," Kaito says. "If Yuma asked you out."

"And I said 'no,'" Shark grumbles. "Why d'you care?"

"Remember… ugh.” Kaito swallows. “Okay, remember when I said that thing about how Chris is to me how Yuma is to you."

"So nothing."

Kaito looks to his left, looks to his right, and lowers his head and his voice.

"So... everything."

Shark's eyes widen, and he slinks back in his chair, laughing. "Jesus."

"No, not that everything. Is that how you feel about Yuma?"

Shark's smile melts into a frown so fast it's like real life skipped some frames. Kaito's satisfied with that, so he slinks back in his own chair and motions for Shark. "That's all I had to say. Your turn."

"That is _so_ not all!"

"Yeah, it is."

"Liar!"

"Child."

Another kick under the table, and another stomp on toes, and Shark shouts out so loud in pain that the entire cafeteria goes quiet and stares at them until Kaito waves them dismissed and they go to whispering about Ryan and Cato instead.

"Um, _ow_?"

"Maybe," says Kaito, scrolling through the messages on his phone now, "you should consider not wearing open-toed Adidas."

"Maybe you should consider getting that stick surgically removed from your ass!" Shark reaches for and grabs Kaito's phone, sneering, "Should I call Chris to help you?"

"Should _I_ tell Yuma about your nocturnal emission?"

Kaito figures that by now he has Shark mostly figured out; Shark, the guy who doesn't like his name being mangled by anyone, so he goes by a nickname that he probably chose because of his favorite character on Duel Monsters; Shark, who got kicked out of Barian Academy for something he probably didn't do, and his sister loves him so much that she followed after him all the way to the poor quality of Heartland Central; Shark, who wants to take a gap year and maybe not even go to college, because he has a guitar and a killer voice (but don't tell Shark Kaito thought that) and maybe he can make a living from it; Shark, who is so painfully genuine even when he tries to act tough that Kaito wants to step on his toes just so he'll quit being a naive little baby.

But Kaito didn't figure that when he'd imply a wet dream with Yuma, Shark would freeze.

Kaito holds his head in his hands, unbelieving. "Oh. My. _God_."

"H-Hang on! I didn't—I didn't come in my sleep, god dammit, Kaito, stop! Stop making that face!"

"You totally froze up."

"No no no no no I did not."

" _Ryoga_ ," Kaito says, and he does it like Yuma and he grins in a lopsided way, which is all fun and games until Shark lunges over the table and all their cards go flying everywhere and Kaito falls back in his chair and they wrestle on the gross high school cafeteria floor, pulling at clothes and at hair and throwing punches until Kaito lands flat with his back on the floor and Shark is straddling him, punches him right in the face—and the next thing Kaito knows, he’s being held up by his arms and that substitute from before is yelling something about Cato and Ryan. 

* * *

Ten minutes later finds Kay-Toe Ten-Joe and Rye-Oh-Guh Cami-She-Row in the office of student affairs, Kaito with an ice pack pressed to his left eye and Shark with napkin to his nose, both of their clothes a mess—ripped and crumbed and dirty—and their hair still in place for an overabundance of hair gel.

The white guy in the blue shirt and the grey pants and the red tie is glaring at them from over his glasses as he types the incident report into his computer, stopping every now and then to adjust his glasses or to squint at Kaito's hair or Shark's nails or piercings, then nodding to himself and writing it down, like somehow the purple polish on Shark's hands or the Big Dipper on his ears can be used against him. Finally the man finishes and asks, sternly, if he can trust these two Responsible Young Men to stay alone for two minutes without starting a fight—as though Shark and Kaito have some sort of record to go on, what the hell white dude—and leaves, and Shark and Kaito are alone and glaring at each other's reflections… before they burst out laughing.

"You look like death."

"You still look kind of pretty," Kaito says, and moves the ice pack a bit, experimentally touching the bruised skin before flinching and putting it back in place. "I'm disappointed in myself."

"Hmph."

"I can't believe you beat me up because I called you your actual name."

“You’re a shit kisser.”

“That’s a new one.”

“You really don’t remember?”

“Remember _what_?”

“That… that night we—”

“...Oh.”

Kaito remembers.

Shark is _blushing_.

“What,” says Kaito, slowly, because it wasn’t a big deal, okay, they were drunk, putting his mouth on another person’s mouth is just kind of natural, right, Kaito doesn’t really regret it, “did I take your kissing virginity?”

“ _No_.” Shark grits his teeth. “Don’t use that word.”

Kaito figures rocking two black eyes won’t be worth it, so he nods. “I just don’t see why you’re making a big deal out of it.”

“We—You—”

“My mouth was on your mouth, I kind of enjoyed it, your bed is comfy, and?”

“My _bed_?!”

“You don’t actually remember anything, do you?”

“ _My bed_.”

“Wow,” says Kaito, leaning back in his chair and pillowing his hands behind his head, “and I thought your secret was something exciting. Do I tell people I got this eye because Shark Kamishiro found out he kissed me?”

Kaito has never seen so many interesting expressions on Shark’s face in rapid succession; he leaps out of his chair and points at Kaito like he’s got something really insulting to say, but then goes from an uncomprehending fish face to outrage to looking like he’s about to cry, when he finally mutters, "It’s for a lot of things. You said I had a—a—"

"B, C, D?"

"—about Yuma—"

It doesn't look like Shark is about to say it any day now, so Kaito has to supply, patiently, "A wet dream?"

Shark makes a face, like he's just smelled something foul, or looked at Kaito's gross, bruised face, probably. "That."

"There's this amazing thing that exists out there in this world, did you know? It's called a joke."

Shark collapses in his chair again and crosses his arms and stares at the wall, defeated. "You should stick to you poetry."

"Sure."

…

…

…

"So no dream, ever?"

"...We held hands."

"Cute."

…

…

"Hey, Kaito. Hand over your phone."

"What?"

“Just do it.”

So he does.

“It’s ancient,” comes the sneer, but Shark puts something in anyway, texts himself from it, and when he feels the vibration in his pocket, smirks, satisfied. He hands it back.

“Uh.. Thanks.”

"So. If you thought I creamed myself over Yuma, and this Chris guy is _your_ Yuma…"

"No."

"...what does that say about you?"


	13. Itoko & Novio

[ _Suspended?_ ]

[ _Suspended._ ]

[ _What did you do? Ace too many tests?_ ]

[ _Accused a sixteen year old of having Dreams about his crush._ ]

[ _Dreams?_ ]

[ _Wet ones._ ]

[ _Like the wipes?_ ]

[ _Christopher._ ]

[ _Kidding!  
I see._ ]

[ _Actually we made out ._ ]  
[ _A while aim_ ]  
[ _Ago_ ]  
[ _We were drunk_ ]

[ _They can suspend you for that?_ ]

[ _We got into a fight._ ]

[ _Did you win?_ ]

[ _Ha. Ha._ ]

[ _Do you at least look cute all beat up?_ ]

[ _I guess you’d say so._ ]

[ _Just me?  
Speaking of—_ ]

[ _Of?_ ]

[ _Cute boys. And Dreams, I guess—_ ]

[ _Christopher._ ]

[ _Ka-ee-toe._ ]

[ _You're a headache._ ]

[ _Your headache?_ ]

[ _Haven't decided yet._ ]

[ _Take your time._ ]

* * *

[ _so rio might kill me_ ]

[ _Yuma’ll think it’s cool._ ]

[ _yuma thinks everything we do is cool_ ]

[ _Point._ ]

[ _ok but she’s seriously gonna kill me_ ]  
[ _she has a frying pan_ ]

[ _A frying pan._ ]

[ _DUDE FRYING PANS ARE INTENSE_ ]  
[ _i once seriously contemplated starting a gang that uses only frying pans_ ]  
[ _they can MURDER_ ]

[ _I can’t even tell if you’re serious._ ]

[ _you’re sooooo slow at this_ ]  
[ _get a new phone_ ]

[ _You owe me like 3 dollars already_ ]

[ _3 dollars_ ]  
[ _wait you were serious you don’t even have a plan_ ]

[ _No._ ]

[ _wow_ ]  
[ _sucks_ ]  
[ _2_ ]  
[ _suck_ ]  
[ _XD_ ]

* * *

One week’s suspension. Or, really, four free days off of school, linked to a weekend for a six day break, all because they got into a fight over some dreams and a card game and maybe some making out at a party that Shark can’t even remember (but insists was a terrible experience). Really, Kaito thinks they should be thanking each other—now they don’t have to go to school, can sleep in until noon on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, don’t have to bother with homework or classwork or even wearing pants, and, hey, for all that summer was absolute torture, what’s actually _meant_ to be a punishment isn’t so bad.

The only real problem is hiding it from Haruto. Kaito can avoid his dad all he wants; whether or not Faker knows about the suspension, whether or not he got a call from the student affairs office and a report detailing the incident, whether or not _we’re going to have a serious talk when I get home today, Kite,_ he doesn’t care about disappointing his dad, doesn’t see him all that often, anyway. He _is_ worried about disappointing Haruto, though, because he doesn’t want his little brother to get even more concerned about Kaito’s well-being, doesn’t want Haruto to find out that he was suspended or that he fought Shark and lost, talk about “you’re embarrassing me, _Niisan_ ”...

The first thing Kaito does when he gets home is stare at his reflection. 

This... would be a lot easier without physical evidence.

It comes with his paleass skin, really (thanks for nothing, Dad). If he were Yuma, the same injury would look a lot less like an eggplant was growing and festering on his face. How is he supposed to keep this a secret?

Well, it doesn’t end up mattering; Haruto sneaks up on him when he’s at the kitchen table with a bowl of ice cream melting next to him and his laptop open to a Google search for how long this’ll take to heal. Kaito was hoping to have come up with something by then, but he lost half an hour of his research time when the wiki for hematoma led him to ice packs, which led him to heating pads, which led him to the human brain, so he ends up getting caught red-handed, and the only thing left to say when Haruto starts tapping his foot expectantly is the truth.

“Shark and I dueled,” Kaito says, warily meeting Haruto’s glare. Well, it’s not like he has to tell him _everything_...

“And?”

“And I said something Shark got mad at. So, uh, don’t call people names?”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all,” Kaito nods, and puts down his laptop’s hood. “I’m all right. It looks worse than it is. D’you wanna finish _Portal_ today?”

And after a final scrutinization Haruto drops his backpack to the floor and grins, so on the Monday afternoon following his suspension, Kaito watches Haruto stumble through a run of _Portal_ and helps him out a bit, too—but mostly he just lies on the couch with a sandwich bag of melting ice pressed onto half his face and his eyes on his phone. He’s been more glued to the thing in the past three days than he’s ever been before, and his hands are starting to hurt from holding it the way he does and the T9 is irritating and makes him respond slower than either Chris or Shark do, which makes him kind of anxious. Shark—Ryoga?—Shark capitalizes on Kaito’s timing and phone model just to piss him off, sends him things in Japanese that Kaito can only see as boxes and wouldn’t be able to read, anyway, so Kaito has no choice but to accept defeat on this battlefield.

[遅いなあ _kaito_ ]

[ _Yeah, I'm box box box about you, too._ ]

Shark is, Kaito quickly ascertains, a lot more talkative as a typist than he is as a speaker. He’s the one to initiate conversation, texts Kaito a few minutes after they head their separate ways; starts it off with how Rio is going to kill him (but took that back fifteen minutes ago when Rio just rolled her eyes and said she'd handle it with their parents, who love Shark and Rio so much that it won’t even really been a thing). Shark asks how it went for Kaito, too, to which Kaito responds, "pending," because he thought his dad wouldn’t really care, but the forthcoming “serious talk” is still looming.

Shark doesn’t respond right away after that, so Kaito turns his full attention to Haruto and to the TV—except that it's not actually his full attention because he keeps looking down at his phone again, waiting for Shark or Chris to say something else. But it looks like Chris's phone might've gotten confiscated for his not paying attention in lecture, and it looks like Shark's run out of clever things to say.

Actually… Kaito wants to ask Shark a question, but he's not really sure how or when or where he should go about it.

See, Shark saved his name as “Ryoga” in Kaito's phone.

Was getting beat up some weird initiation into Shark—uh, Ryoga Kamishiro's in-group? Or is it just a formality observed after sharing a bed?

“Niisan,” says Haruto, interrupting Kaito’s thought process by pushing the controller into his hands, “help.” Chell has failed to make the proper jump too many times now, so Kaito, who’s gone through this game maybe six times now, sits up and deftly moves her from one platform to the other, then hands the controller back. Haruto grins, resumes playing, and once the puzzle is conquered, notes, "Your phone's buzzing a lot."

" _Mitsuketa_ ," says Kaito, putting his hands over Haruto's eyes like he did when they used to play hide-and-seek. Haruto shakes his head around to get Kaito's hands out of his face because, _um, hello, Niisan, video games_ , and Kaito laughs. "Sorry."

"Were you talking to Yuma this whole time?"

"Nah." He realizes he hasn’t told Haruto that he's talking to Chris again, Haruto who liked Chris and his visits as much as Kaito did the summer before last, Haruto who probably misses Chris, too. Haruto has friends, yeah, but he likes talking to people older than him just as much as he likes playing with people his age, because Haruto is just that kind of person. Chris was basically a second older brother to him, and one that wasn't as cranky all the time, too. So: “I’m talking to Chris.”

Haruto misses another jump in his surprise, turns around to face him with such animation that Kaito's afraid he’ll hurt himself. "You are?!"

"Yeah," says Kaito, sheepish. "You okay there?"

Haruto's answer is launching into a hug, more excited about Kaito talking to Chris again than Kaito was himself. "Niisan, that's great!"

"You think so?"

"Yeah! I'm really happy for you!"

And if Haruto's happy, he wants to make him happier, pretend the suspension doesn't exist, and even if it does it only brought him and Shark closer, right, so Kaito adds: "I'm talking to Yuma and... Shark more, too. Outside of school."

"Good. Friends are good for your health."

"You sound like a textbook."

"I just know how you work."

"Yeah?"

"Yep!" And with that Haruto returns to his game and Kaito pulls out his phone, smiling to himself.

[ _you have anything to do tom_ ]  
[ _SLOWASS TYPER_ ]  
[ _GET_ ]  
[ _A_ ]  
[ _NEW_ ]  
[ _PHONE_ ]

[ _No I don't. Why?_ ]

[ _wtf took you a century_ ]  
[ _idk i don't really wanna stay at home_ ]  
[ _so i was thinking boba_ ]  
[ _& if you wanted to come or w/e_ ]

[ _How forward.  
Sure, I’ll get involved with you._ ]

[ _WOW_ ]  
[ _listen KAITO_ ]  
[ _wow autocorrevt got excited there_ ]

[ _How often do you yell my name, ~Nasch~?_ ]

[ _it changed asshole to KAITO_ ]  
[ _it knows_ ]  
[ _ps I’m gonna punch u again_ ]  
[ _^_____^_ ]

[ _Please be gentle._ ]

* * *

Kaito falls asleep on the couch before his dad gets home, and stirs when he and Haruto are having dinner, talking in quiet voices so as not to wake Kaito, and, yeah, his secret is probably exposed by now. Kaito doesn’t move for not wanting to have this conversation, sinks back into the sofa and to sleep, his thoughts tinged with irritation.

Hypnagogia is where his dad later finds him, calling, “Kaito?” and Kaito shuts his eyes tight, _I’m not awake don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t_ touch _me_ , and he hears his dad come up to him, feels a blanket being draped over his legs; and when Kaito’s eyes are squeezed so tight they might pop right out of his head, he feels his father kiss his forehead.

Faker doesn’t notice he’s awake, or if he does, doesn’t say anything. Instead there is a sigh and a barely discernible, “I’m sorry, son,” and then Faker leaves.

Kaito slides to the floor, rubs his forehead like it’s been poisoned, and trudges up to his room.

* * *

Shark Drake appears in his driveway sometime around noon, and Kaito pulls on the nearest hoodie he can find and heads outside. For some reason, it doesn’t occur to him that he and Shark are riding together until Shark tosses him an extra helmet, and, uh, wow, he is so not doing this.

“What, you gonna ride your bike?”

“You want my arms around you that badly?”

“You want your whole face purple?”

“You used that one already,” Kaito points out, but climbs on, careful to maintain his distance. “Where we headed?”

Kaito knows a shop in LA. Shark knows one by Barian Academy, which is about thirty dollars and an hour cheaper, so Shark takes them to a small family-owned tea house wedged in between the pizzeria and the hobby shop downtown. Kaito’s been to the hobby shop before (with Haruto, of course), but he doesn’t remember the tea house, which can probably be attributed to the fact that it was opened last year in March or something, and Rio worked there for the opening week, still works there now, actually, so that’s how Shark’s familiar with it. Apparently he’s always hanging around and mooching off his sister’s discounts, but today his wallet’s going to suffer since Rio’s doing this amazing thing called not being suspended, and Kaito’s also managed to convince Shark to treat him, lest Yuma find a link to BENETNASCH’s YouTube channel before the week is up.

“I liked your Bruno Mars cover, by the way.”

“Do you like breathing?” Shark offers.

Kaito snickers and follows him inside. There’re three or four tables and a few stools and some lime green sofas, facing a big screen TV that’s playing some Korean drama that Kaito thinks he might recognize and actor from. The walls are decorated with tiny, hexagonal mirrors shaped like honeycombs, and the menus have little bee stickers that aid in choosing tea flavors based on whether you want tangy or fruity or sour, and list the toppings that are offered. The walls themselves are the color of pink lemonade, and basically the entire store screams one word: _kawaii_. It feels weird that they’re not here with Yuma.

“Welcome!” the girl at the counter says when they approach, and Kaito swears he’s seen her green hair and pink ribbon and kind smile before, but he can’t quite place where… Kotori?... might be from. “How can I help you?”

“Taro, soy milk and extra boba,” Shark recites, like it’s his usual.

“Cool,” says Kotori, nodding, and directs her attention to Kaito, but Kaito himself is staring at one of the bee signs that’s advertising the merits of various healthy choices in food, pomegranates are good antioxidants and kiwis are good source for dietary fiber, cantaloupe for healthy skin and bananas for reduced risk of cancer... 

“Kaito?”

“Huh, what?”

“What d’you want?” Shark motions with his shoulder in Kotori’s direction. She’s still smiling patiently. “I’m paying for you, remember?”

“Oh,” says Kaito, who suddenly doesn’t want anything at all, but at Shark’s impatience he mutters out, “Uh, just green.”

“Want milk with that?”

“No. No bubbles, either.”

Shark looks at him strangely, like, what is the point of boba milk tea if you aren’t having the boba and you aren’t having the milk, but Kaito is spacing out so he doesn’t say anything, and Kotori doesn’t say anything because she works here and she’s probably had much, much worse. Shark pays and it’s like eight dollars or something, which Kaito figures covers his texting bill—he should really consider getting a plan, huh, and maybe a phone with a camera and conversation view and a keyboard and internet access—and Kotori wishes them a nice day and sneezes and apologizes because she’s getting kind of sick but don’t worry, she washed her hands, and pulls out her own phone to hop on Twitter or something—must be boring here during school hours, but, hey, she’s getting paid. 

Shark swipes up his drink and Kaito’s, tells Kaito to grab two straws, and they head to the seats right in front of the TV—behind which, Kaito thinks he spots a familiar face or two or three.

“You must’ve come here a lot,” Kaito says, looking at the picture, six kids in Barian uniforms celebrating a victory, and they’ve signed their names underneath, Gilag and Alit and Mizael and Durbe, Shark and Rio the twins and the championship—and then part of the picture’s been ripped off, part of the caption crudely crossed out in Sharpie and then whited out, but when Kaito squints he can see something’s there, and Shark says only, “He’s not allowed here anymore. Rio got him banned.”

Kaito has no idea who Shark is talking about, but he leaves the picture behind and puts a straw in Shark’s outstretched hand. They sit opposite each other and Shark’s set their drinks down so Kaito sees the purple one and the, uh, other one, and it looks, uh...

“Plain as hell,” Shark deadpans. “What a waste of money.”

Kaito takes an experimental slurp. Shark raises an eyebrow. Kaito slowly sets it down.

Shark sighs and stomps back up to the counter to buy another one.

“Hey, wait—”

He comes back with a lavender drink to match his own and slams it down so hard that the cup breaks and spills all over the table and the floor, and Kaito hears Kotori clap a hand to her forehead before rushing to them and demanding the boys go get her maybe a million napkins, and the three of them spend five minutes mopping up the floor and drying up the table—and then Kotori points them out the door, no refund included. Shark sighs again, switches his and Kaito’s straws, and pushes the more appetizing one into Kaito’s hand.

“You owe me like three dollars,” says Shark.

Kaito sips at it, and it’s really, really good, holy shit. “...Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it to Yuma,” comes the response, as Shark tries Kaito’s… thing, making a face. “I mean it.”

“I know you do,” Kaito says, and points at his eye to demonstrate. Shark grins at his work of art, and Kaito shakes his head. “Asshole.”

“Whitey.”

“Drop-out.”

“Brocon.”

“Lovesick _puppy_.”

“Wow, Pot, I’m Kettle.”

“Okay, _Nasch_ —”

“Kaito?”

A new voice joins them as they’re walking down the street, one that Kaito recognizes and from the look of things, Shark does, too, because the two of them freeze and turn to their left to find someone familiar, except that Mizael bleached his hair and got tanner and taller, too, unfairly enough, and, yeah, that’s right — Mizael’s standing there in his peacoat and his jeans and his scarf and his god damn loafers to Kaito in his argyle Space Invaders hoodie and his sweatpants and his Skechers, and next to Mizael is someone that Kaito’s seen around but hasn’t placed a name to, a guy with grey helmet-shaped hair and glasses and a Barian Academy uniform…

“Ryoga?” says the guy, and Shark grits his teeth.

“Durbe. Mizael.”

“Kaito,” repeats Mizael, tilting his head, and Kaito gets the sight of a dragon cuff resting on his ear, Mizael _would_ , “shouldn’t you guys be in school?”

“Shouldn’t you?” asks Kaito, suddenly tired. Talking to Mizael was not something he expected to do today; it kind of saps him of his energy, because Mizael has this way of speaking that’s slow and that’s earnest, and he carries himself like he always has, prideful and upright to Kaito’s slouch, always a step ahead.

“I’m on break. Schwarzschild lets out early for Thanksgiving.” There’s a pause, and the other guy—Durbe—is still watching Shark carefully, and Shark looks this way and that, doing his best to avoid him, meets eyes with Kaito like _yeah, we need to leave_. 

Mizael frowns at Kaito’s eye. “What… um, how are you?”

“Great,” lies Kaito, and nods once at Shark. “Actually, we kind of have to go.”

“Oh,” says Mizael, fixing his hair. “Well then. See you around? I texted you.”

“Yeah,” says Kaito, and he’s not sure if it’s confirmation or if it’s an agreement or if it’s just a placeholder; Shark gives a salute and a “later” to his former classmates, Kaito waves good-bye, and the two of them hightail it outta there to where they parked Shark Drake, where they get a good look at each other and notice that the other is pale, so Kaito says, “Durbe?” and Shark goes, “Ex,” and Kaito says, “Ouch,” and Shark shakes his head, “Not at all.”

“Hm?”

“Didn’t hurt much. We only… ‘cause I had to switch schools. So I thought that we should, you know.” Shark shakes his drink and stares at the straw, like there’s a memory hiding somewhere in the tea, or one that’s replaying in his head. Then he shakes himself. “Durbe is really…” Shark shrugs. “I dunno.”

“He’s the one you were avoiding at your party.”

“...Yeah.” Shark scratches the back of his head. “Rio and him still talk. He... came up with Benet Nasch. We matched. Dubhe is…”

“Big Dipper. I know.”

Shark nods. Fidgets with his earring. “Yeah.”

They sip at their tea.

“Chris ask you out yet?”

“Bite me.”

“Gross.”

They toss their empty cups in a trash can nearby, and climb on Shark Drake to head home.

"Hey, Shark."

"Yeah?"

"Why’d you put 'Ryoga' in my phone?"

"You say it right," says Ryoga, and that's that.


	14. Kite Arrives at the Mall

Saturday starts when Haruto shakes him up for _Duel Monsters_.

"Too early," Kaito murmurs into the blankets, and turns to his other side.

"Nii- _san_!" Haruto shakes him harder, complains that it’s 11:25 and Kaito went to bed at ten last night, how much sleep does he even _need_ , he’s like a _baby_ , and today’s the last episode, okay, they watched the first episode together two years ago and now they have to watch the last one together, too.

It’s a convincing argument.

" _You’re_ the baby," Kaito says, but he rolls out of bed.

"Just hurry up!" Haruto rushes out to plant himself in front of the TV before the recap starts. Kaito is left to yawn and stretch and take in his reflection with heavy eyelids; the tangled mess of blond and green that is his hair and the dark purple blob that is his black eye greet him. He realizes he’s sitting on something. Pulls out his phone. Remembers that he doesn’t remember going to sleep, because he may have gone to _bed_ at ten but he had his phone in his hand and three conversations going at once, one with Chris and one with Ryoga and one with Ryoga and Yuma at the same time, because Ryoga set up a group chat and Kaito’s friends are both the kinds of people who send

messages

like

this.

Suffice to say they probably owe him upwards of fifty dollars by now, but he’s stopped caring—never really cared to begin with, really, it’s not _his_ money down the drain—because when it’s 1AM and he can’t go to sleep for one reason or another and Ryoga or Chris is helpfully awake, Kaito’s not going to complain about the company.

Although he will complain about the endless stream of unrecognized characters that Yuma informs him are supposed to be emotes, not question mark question mark question mark. And he will complain about the speed at which the two of them dispatch messages, because they can type faster than he can open each response, never mind T9 something back.

"Ni- _i_ -san! It’s starting!"

Kaito pulls on some pants, grabs his phone and the charger, and heads downstairs.

The latest iteration of _Duel Monsters_ is around a hundred episodes long. It’s the first one Haruto’s seen every episode of (and in order), and Haruto’s based his deck on his favorite characters’, too, so to say he’s attached to it is an understatement. Kaito liked the original—grew up with it, you know—but he’s still watched most of the others, is invested enough to get sad when there’s a callback to episode one and this time their main character’s grown strong enough to win on his own…

Invested enough to get sadder than Haruto, actually. Kaito gets sentimental. Haruto just gets pumped up.

"Wow!" Haruto’s bouncing in his seat. "That was _so_ cool!"

"Yeah…"

Haruto gets up to switch the TV from satellite to the auxiliary; having finished _Portal_ , Haruto’s got a newfound interest in completing _The Wind Waker_ a hundred percent, and Kaito’s promised to stay and watch and play with him, too, though he’s declined on accepting the Tingle Tuner. GameCube controller in hand, Haruto plops back down next to him, and then, squinting at Kaito, asks, "...hey, did you get that from Miza-nii?"

"What?"

Haruto nods at Kaito’s shirt. Kaito looks down, and, wow, um, he forgot he was wearing a Barian Academy gym tee.

"...Oh."

Actually, it's, uh, Ryoga's, because Kaito went over the other day and there was a bit of an accident, so Ryoga flung the gray uniform at him and said he could keep it, and—

The doorbell rings, mercifully bringing Kaito's thoughts to a halt.

"I'll get it!"

Kaito puts a hand on Haruto's shoulder to stop him from scrambling up. "Hold up," he says, because they never get guests, especially not on Saturday mornings when Dad isn’t home. "Expecting something?"

"Check." Haruto’s grinning with his teeth sticking out, which is kind of ominous, reminds Kaito of the day a few months ago when Faker left his wallet at home… What, were Yuma and Ryoga supposed to come today? Is it someone's birthday or something? No, Kaito’s is in March and Haruto’s is in February, so… "Haruto…"

The bell rings again. Haruto nudges him up, so Kaito goes to open the door.

It’s... Mizael.

"Hey," says his cousin.

"Bye," says Kaito, and makes to slam the door, except that Mizael fights it open and Mizael's stronger, so Kaito has to turn around and force it shut with his back while he calls out, "Haruto, it’s for you!"

Haruto glares at him. "Niisan!" 

"What?"

The glare only gets more pointed, so Kaito sighs and moves out of the way and Mizael stumbles forward, which is a lovely sight to behold since it messes up his bleached blond hair—as though that didn’t make him look weird enough.

Mizael, in his loafers and his peacoat and his ponytail, straightens. He has something to say; it could be a "hi" or it could be a "what the hell was that," but before whatever he had planned slips out, Mizael takes in the sight of Kaito and his hair and his Barian Academy tee (cough), and...

Frowning, Mizael notes, "You’re not ready."

Huh? "What?"

Mizael looks beyond Kaito’s shoulder at Haruto. "Can I…?"

"I don’t know," says Kaito, blocking Mizael's view. " _Can_ you?"

Mizael looks like he can’t believe Kaito’s elementary school joke, but is spared from saying something when Haruto, who’s appeared beside Kaito and shoulders him, smiles sweetly. "Hi Miza-nii! Come in!"

"Hey, Haruto," says Mizael, and he kneels down to ruffle Haruto’s hair—which, um, _wow_ , no? "How’s everything? You sounded sick yesterday."

"I was whispering so Niisan wouldn’t hear me," Haruto says gleefully, and he pulls Mizael farther inside by the sleeve, and, um, _what_ , has Haruto been having secret conversations about Kaito behind his back? Kaito’s left standing by the door as Mizael asks Haruto how he’s doing and what’s been up, casual conversation like they haven’t just seen each other for the first time in years.

"Wait," calls Kaito, pulling the door shut, "wouldn’t hear you say what?"

Mizael and Haruto share a look and share a smile, the same sheepish kind of smile that Kaito's come to resent. Haruto motions for Mizael to speak, so their cousin sighs, steps forward, and says, "I'm taking you to the mall."

"...Are you."

"Yes," Mizael says, and then with a second scan of Kaito’s clothing, he takes Kaito’s arm and pulls him toward the stairs. "C’mon. Let’s get you into something… not that."

* * *

Mizael raids Kaito's closet. Kaito thought he was self-conscious when Ryoga and Yuma were in his room, but with Mizael there he learns what self-consciousness really means, because in his idiocy Kaito left his stupid notebook wide open on the desk, right next to the pile of Duel Monsters cards he was sorting through on Thursday. Kaito _knows_ that Mizael saw the journal lying there and he _knows_ that Mizael wants to ask, is probably wondering why the hell Kaito has the random assortment of kanji that is horse and god and fang next to the katakana _Kurisu_ , but Mizael completely ignores the tension in the air when he stomps over to the closet and scrutinizes Kaito’s wardrobe.

Kaito isn’t exactly Fashion; Mizael can criticize every single item of clothing that Kaito owns, which, like, he doesn’t do _aloud_ , but he _can_. It is a thing of which he is capable, no matter how silent Mizael is when he casually pulls out Kaito’s tees and tosses them this way and that, shaking his head, and, _hey, just cleaned up around here, you mind_? Finally, Mizael digs out a plain T-shirt and a hoodie and some jeans and holds them out to Kaito.

"I’m not going."

"You need to get out more."

"Says you?"

"Says Haruto."

Damn.

"C’mon." Mizael smiles, genuine and warm, and if Kaito blinks he might be able to see the boy with the dark hair and the braces, telling a story by the bonfire. "It’ll be fun."

Kaito doesn’t blink. "We haven’t talked in like four years."

"Well," says Mizael, pushing the clothes into Kaito’s arms, "let’s change that. I’ll be downstairs."

And he leaves. Kaito stares after him, stares at the clothes in his arms. Drops them on the floor. Closes the notebook on his desk, stretches out on his bed, and stares at the ceiling. His hands itch for his phone, but when he looks around for it, he realizes he left it downstairs, and his fingers start to twitch with anxiety.

Downstairs, Mizael’ll be talking to Haruto, who thinks that Kaito needs to get out more, even though Kaito thinks he’s been doing pretty good, because he’s been eating right and smiling and going out with Ryoga every once in a while, met up with Yuma for lunch at the jungle gym even while he was suspended; been talking to Chris and pulling the blinds open every now and then to let in some sunlight. But… okay, if he’s honest with himself, as he thinks about where his phone must be nestled in the sofa, thinks about how often he checks for messages and how often he actually gets them... Kaito might be lonelier now than he’s ever been before.

It’s like he’s only ever okay when he’s distracted. With Haruto or with Yuma or with Chris or with Ryoga, as long as he’s talking to them he feels okay and he feels happy, maybe he’s okay when he thinks about them, too, but in the silence of his bedroom the quiet kind of echoes louder than ever.

It’s scary.

Kaito sits up, and his eyes fall on the cards spread out on his desk. Galaxy Wizard is on top; earlier, Kaito couldn’t decide whether he wanted two or three of them, and now as he stares at the spellcaster, he remembers something, a thought locked somewhere in the back of his head and only dislodged by the dragon cuff on Mizael’s ear. Galaxy Wizard: a card he and Mizael fought over years ago, a card that they ripped, and Kaito was mad at him for the rest of the day and Mizael was mad right back, and in the end Mizael got to keep it, too, because they were at his house when it happened and while they kept it a secret from the adults, Mizael happened to ask for the tape.

Well, fine, Kaito didn’t want some dumb ripped card anyway—except that six months later was some holiday or another and there was Mizael with a booster pack outstretched and Kaito pulled it open, and there it was. Galaxy Wizard. And they’d dueled and played and laughed, fought again, but got over it, too.

Kaito pulls on the tee and the hoodie and the jeans.

* * *

"So, what, no malls in Boston?"

"No time to go." 

"Oh."

The mall closest to Heartland is an easy walk from Barian Academy, but Kaito figures Mizael would be intimately acquainted with it either way. He drives them there like he’s driving them home, with the radio on and his fingers tapping to the beat at stoplights, and he takes backroads and shortcuts that are so absurdly complicated that Kaito has to wonder if they’re actually _short_ cuts at all.

They don’t talk much. Mizael asks the usual questions once or twice: what’s up, how’s senior year, how are you, but Kaito’s responses are curt, so a conversation doesn’t manifest. Even now, Kaito’s not entirely sure why he agreed to come, and is acutely aware of how little battery his phone has left.

...Though Mizael doesn’t seem to know why he’s at the mall, either, outside of the vaguely established adventure of "awkward cousin outing." He can’t even decide where to park the car at first; the mall has like five different entrances, one that’s closer to the EBGames and one that’s closer to the food court, etc, and Mizael circles it once, twice, before finally deciding to stop by a PacSun.

"Y’know they have these on the East Coast?"

Kaito did not. "Are we here for a reason, or...?"

Mizael doesn’t answer. Instead he pulls Kaito this way and that, from clothing stores ("Try these on!" "I’m not wearing tights, Miza") to the hobby shop ("You still into Duel Monsters?" "Sorta…") to a candle shop to grab a present for Mizael’s mother, whose birthday falls over the break ("So this is apparently what the moonlit night smells like" "A candle?"). They venture into a Hollister and Kaito gets lost; they step into a Hot Topic and Kaito recognizes a shirt he’s seen Ryoga wear. Mizael is more careful than Chris when he asks Kaito what he can treat him to, and Kaito is more lenient with Mizael than he is with Chris because his cousin isn’t his crush isn’t someone he has to leave an impression on, which is, you know? Kind of relaxing.

For all their adventuring, they haven’t actually bought much before they head to the food court. Kaito frowned at a booster and some singles in the hobby shop, shook his head, and decided against it; Mizael stared wistfully at some of the warmer wear and told him about how cold it is in Boston and that snow is fun the first time class is cancelled and obnoxious the fifth, because by then professors start making you show up for online sessions or make-ups on Fridays. By the end of lunch Kaito isn’t even checking his phone all that often, doesn’t reply to Ryoga’s latest liveblog of his sister’s dentist appointment (he had to drive her and they were late and the dentists are even later, boohoo), and maybe kind of doesn’t mind Mizael’s company.

"So," Mizael starts, once Kaito’s finished with his sub, but Kaito cuts him off with, "If you’re gonna ask how my life’s been, save it."

"I was going to ask if you wanted a smoothie," Mizael says, gesturing to a stand behind him. "But I’ll save it."

That makes Kaito feel stupid. "Oh. Um, sor—"

"Don’t worry about it. You want?"

Kaito decides against it, but Mizael says he’s been craving this since he left for Boston in August, so Kaito’ll have to excuse him if he gets one for himself. It’s not like Kaito was going to call him rude or anything—honestly, he’s a little lost in his own thoughts, because he figured Mizael would want to know all about the little freakshow Kaito’s family has become in opposition to Mizael’s perfect little world…

But what does Mizael even know? Kaito said it himself—they haven’t really talked in four years, and it’s not like Kaito or his dad or Haruto have really talked to Mizael or his parents, either. Four minute phone calls or emails on birthdays and Christmas, New Years and anniversaries, and that’s pretty much it.

The anxiousness Kaito feels when he’s alone comes back. So does Mizael. Kaito bites his lip.

"Um, Miza…"

"Hm?"

"Do you… know what happened? Last year?" Six months ago. Far enough away in his memory to be a year, fresh enough a wound to have been a few weeks ago.

"Not in detail," admits Mizael. "I didn’t plan on asking."

"I… Haruto got hurt. In a car crash. Again."

"Kaito?"

"I wasn’t there…" Two missed calls. A text. _Kite—at the hospital. Call asap._ "It was his legs." That much Mizael probably knows. His parents came to see Haruto in the hospital. "Couldn’t walk for months… Doctors said it’s a miracle he can, now. Of course it is. But then I had to go and get sick myself, too."

"Stress," offers Mizael, and Kaito nods. 

"It’s in my family," Kaito says. "Paternal grandmother or something. But the diabetes is sort of collateral damage."

"Yeah?"

This is weird. It’s… really weird. Kaito didn’t plan on going to the mall today, didn’t plan on seeing his cousin or going shopping with him or spilling out his heart, either. But he didn’t plan a lot of things, and Kaito’s already forgetting what kept him from talking to Mizael for so long—because Mizael’s life might look fantastic but that doesn’t mean Mizael is a snob about it and anyway, Mizael is easy to talk to in a way that Chris isn’t. Talking to Mizael isn’t like a breath of fresh air or stepping barefoot in freshly cut grass or whatever; it’s more like something nostalgic and real and he’s… been there all along, kind of. Doesn’t Haruto call him Miza-nii?

(And _is your answer yes or no?_ is always hanging in the air with Chris, too).

"I’m not really a miracle worker like Haruto," Kaito mutters, and he’s finding it harder to keep eye contact. "I’ve made friends and they make me happy but I still don’t know how to stop being a depressed piece of shit."

That was... probably too heavy.

Mizael doesn’t say anything at first, and Kaito looks up to see him kind of thoughtful, and Kaito curses himself and wonders why he said anything at all. He sinks in his chair, reaches for the (now dead) phone in his pocket just to have an excuse not to talk or exist anymore.

"Kaito," says Mizael finally, "you’re not a piece of shit."

Isn’t he?

"I feel like one."

"Shit isn’t purple," says Mizael, and when Kaito has absolutely no idea what he’s talking about, he points to his own eye. "A joke."

"Ha, ha."

"You’re not, though," says Mizael. "It’s okay. To be where and who you are."

"And it gets better."

"No promises. But people like you. We wouldn’t like you if you were a piece of shit, I promise."

People like him. Haruto likes him. Chris and Yuma and Sha—Ryoga (sorta) like him. Mizael, apparently, likes him. Mizael goes on a little — slowly, calmly, the same careful way he spoke in front of the boba place the other day, and when Mizael says something it always sounds authoritative, the polyglot that graduated from his snooty private academy at sixteen and with honors, the sophomore that’s attempting the crazy triple major and going abroad next semester, too.

_You’re important to us, Kaito; it’s not like we keep you around because we_ tolerate _you. Haruto needs you, we’re here now because I missed you, you’ve been getting texts from someone all day and Haruto doesn’t have a phone._

And… he really needed to hear that. Sitting at the food court of the mall across from the bleach-blond, Kaito feels lighter.

"I miss my mom a lot more lately."

Maybe Mizael does, too. Kaito can see it in his eyes, kind of, and he forgot that she was his mom but she was Mizael’s aunt, too. Mizael probably remembers her better than Haruto.

"Text me," offers Mizael. "Whenever it gets bad."

Kaito’s first excuse is, "I don’t have a texting plan."

Mizael laughs. "Sure you do," he says, and he stands, takes his food tray to the trash. Picks up his stuff and beckons for Kaito to do the same, to follow him past the food court and boutiques and shops and stands to the Verizon hiding on the bottom floor. Kaito’s like, what, why are we here, and Mizael explains that okay, so this is a third of the reason why they’re at the mall today: Haruto talked to Faker and to Mizael and Mizael talked to Faker, too, and, _yeah, Kaito, we do talk about you behind your back, way to blow up the phone bill_.

Today, Mizael’s getting Kaito to pick out a new phone.

"Your dad wanted to surprise you," Mizael adds, "but Haruto didn’t think it was a good idea." No, probably not. 

"What’re the other two reasons you wanted to come?"

Mizael glances at his Rolex for the time—Mizael _would_ , huh?—and says, "I maybe have an appointment in like thirty minutes. Wanna get your ears pierced with me?"

"...Sure," says Kaito, because why not? Piercings are pretty cool, right, it’s just that he would feel lame getting them on his own.

"Wait, really?"

"Why’re you so surprised?"

"I just didn’t expect you to say yes," Mizael says, but he shakes himself, grins, and leads Kaito into the store. "Hey, we can match. Helix?"

* * *

So the only piercing Kaito’s ever had is piercing damage. It’s mildly painful, it’s superbly annoying, but holy _hell_ it is _not_ purposefully wounding his skin. Mizael said it wouldn’t hurt after the initial shot, but just like his bruise Kaito can’t stop _touching_ it, the small circular jewel curled up on his ear, and, uh, _ouch_.

Mizael takes longer to get his done, so Kaito ends up in the waiting area with a new gadget in his hands about ten contacts to transfer from one to the other. The smartphone is more comfortable in his hands even if he can’t really type all that well on it yet, and with the app store available he can finally download that stupid app Ryoga and Yuma use to text as a group and see all their emotes, too. He drops Mizael in his favorite contacts— _text me whenever it gets bad_ —without really intending to follow through on his invitation, but kind of keeping it around.

When Mizael’s finally done and they’re heading back to the car and then Kaito’s place, Mizael asks, "So. Since when do you go to Barian?"

"What?"

"You wore the same PJs last night that I did," Mizael says, and Kaito has to think about what he wore to bed last night, and—Oh. Yeah. That.

"It’s, um, Ryoga’s. He said it was too big for him or something." Which isn’t… entirely a lie, because after that mess Ryoga threw it at him and told Kaito to keep it, _it’s too big for me, anyway_ , as though Kaito is _so_ much smaller than the dumb ex-jock.

"Ryoga…?"

"Kamishiro. Shark."

"Oh, yeah, Durbe’s ex."

"Uh, yeah. You know each other, right?"

"Only for a year," says Mizael. "Kind of. I only know him through Durbe."

"You know what happened to ‘em?"

"Not… entirely," says Mizael. "I _really_ only know about the Vector thing through Durbe."

"The Vector thing?"

"I’m… not really sure if I should say if Shark hasn’t already told you, Kaito."

Kaito plays with his new earring. Mizael snorts.

"You know about BENETNASCH?"

"You kidding? It’s like my favorite channel ever."

"See any vids with Durbe in them?" asks Mizael, and Kaito shakes his head. Shark’s YouTube channel has nearly a hundred videos of him and his song covers, from Disney songs in Japanese to the Billboard Hot 100 from last year, and Kaito hasn’t had the time to go through all of them—only the songs that he thought’d be the most entertaining to watch or listen to (like _Just the Way You Are_ ). He saw Rio in some of the thumbnails, so he knew that there were some duets, too, but he didn’t know Durbe was in any of them…

"Should I have?"

"Try… _A Thousand Miles_. Durbe said that’s his favorite."

Kaito pulls it up on his phone. Ryoga from a year ago looks out at him, his expression as neutral as it is when he’s with Yuma—so, like, super grumpy because he’s trying not to smile or blush. He introduces himself as Nasch; says that this is a song he’s been getting requests for; and then introduces his boyfriend, Durbe, who’ll be assisting him in a duet. Durbe is all smiles and grins and when he’s on camera, Ryoga's all smiles and grins, too. They sing, and more than once it looks like Ryoga’s going to burst out into laughter, and, actually, in the outtakes, he does. Ryoga and Durbe are happy and fourteen and they look totally—

"—In love. Wow. So what happened?"

"Vector," says Mizael, and there’s something in the way he says the name that almost explains it all: "The little shit."

And Mizael tells what he knows: that Vector and Ryoga were both in Track and Field the year Durbe wasn’t, and Ryoga was better than Vector could ever hope to be. That Vector was jealous and wanted his place back in their coach’s eyes, that he cheated and hid drugs in his locker and hacked into the school’s system to mess with Ryoga’s test scores, too. That Ryoga found out and didn’t tattle, because it didn’t matter to Ryoga, he doesn’t have to cheat to be better than Vector—but Ryoga _did_ tell Durbe, whose sense of integrity wouldn’t let it go through. That Vector had to sit out a game that brought Ryoga so much glory that Vector thought, hey, it’d be classy to harass Ryoga’s sister just to piss Ryoga off. That one day Vector decided being lewd was especially funny while she was drunk; that Ryoga hunted him down for a fight while he _wasn't_ drunk. That their administration found Vector’s stash in Ryoga’s locker, and that Ryoga, who happened to _not_ be the principal’s favorite nephew, was expelled.

"Shark broke up with Durbe a few days into summer break," Mizael finishes, and Kaito’s kind of left there in awe, staring at a YouTube channel for BENETNASCH and a separate, more quiet one for Dubhe, shared videos with smiles and with laughter. "Not really any relationship problems. Durbe said he thinks that Shark was just really depressed."

"Ryoga’s been avoiding him," Kaito puts in, and Mizael nods. "Yeah."

* * *

[ _hey!_ ]  
[ _it'll hurt a little tom morning depending on how you sleep but then it should subside._ ]  
[ _had lots of fun with you today, cuz!_ ]  
[ _btw — mom wants to know — free on thanksgiving?_ ]  
[ _—miza_ ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please listen to this cover of [a thousand miles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h297vLkHijQ#start=0:00;end=5:08;cycles=-1;autoreplay=false;showoptions=false) and dive into tomo hell with me


	15. Birthdays & Weddings

[ _KAIToOoOoOoOoOooooooo!!!!!!!!_ ]

[ _Yuuuuuuuma!!!_ ]

[ _Lol_ ]  
[ _hi_ ]  
[ _OMG did you know RYOGA’s birthday was this week??????_ ]

[ _Was it?_ ]

[ _OMGGG_ ]  
[ _YEHA_ ]  
[ _I think it was teh 11nd_ ]

[ _Really?_ ]

[ _YEHA Rio told me_ ]  
[ _she was mad because I didn't congratulate her_ ]  
[ _but RYOGA didn't even tell us!!!_ ]  
[ _what do we dooooo_ ]

[ _What do you mean?_ ]

[ _OMG KAIToOoOoOoOoOooooooo CAN YOU BAKE_ ]

[ _what_ ]

[ _WE COULD MAKE A CAKE AND SURPRISE HIM ON MONDAY_ ]

[ _Or I mean_ ]  
[ _I could buy one_ ]

[ _Lol_ ]  
[ _that works 2_ ]

* * *

“Did you know,” drones Kaito into the mic the following morning, “grocery stores are open at 6AM?”

On the other end, Chris yawns. “Did you know that college kids typically aren’t?”

Kaito snickers. “Thanks for the wake up call.”

“Can I go to bed yet?”

“Don’t sleep through class,” Kaito advises, and Chris makes indignant noises on the other end before his mutter of “Good _night_.” Kaito smirks. He knew that he’d never wake up before the sun without Haruto’s intervention, but he didn’t want to, like, mess with his little brother’s sleep or something, so Kaito asked Chris—whose sleep schedule Kaito _doesn’t_ mind disturbing—to give him a wake up call, and it worked nine times better than an alarm, because Kaito’s set Chris a special ringtone. Just, um, so he knows what to expect.

(He briefly contemplated asking Mizael to give him the call, since he figures Mizael is the kind of guy who wakes up at 5:30 to go to the gym and come home and shower and have a complete balanced breakfast with two tall glasses of milk and orange juice; but that would mean answering Mizael’s text about thanksgiving, and… no. Not yet.)

Orbital—that’s what Kaito ended up naming his phone, after the late gaming laptop and the late robot before it—clicks locked. Kaito gets a glimpse at the time, finds it’s the lovely hour of Too Early to Be Alive AM, and covers his mouth for a yawn. The bakery section of the supermarket smells like fresh butter croissants and muffins and coffee and Kaito sighs, his stomach rumbling with patisserie-inspired hopes and dreams; there’s a blueberry muffy that keeps staring at him while he tries to decide what cake to get Ryoga and what he should have written on it, whether Yuma would approve of on something like “one more year 'till legal sex.”

Probably not. It wouldn't fit, anyway.

He finally decides on red velvet (and swipes up the muffy, too), pays the extra ten dollars to have the generic birthday greeting written on it by an unprofessional and underpaid part-time worker, and Ryoga better appreciate this, because Kaito's paying for it out of his own pocket. That's how much he cares.

* * *

"Happy Birhtday… Shork."

"Don't say it like that," Kaito says from behind the camera (per Yuma's orders, he's cameraman). "It's in Caps Lock."

"Yeah!" says Yuma, grinning as he waves from behind Ryoga's shoulders. "It's more like…"—he gets close to Ryoga's ear, and whisper-yells, "HAPPY BIRHTDAY, SHORK!"

Ryoga scowls and makes to push Yuma away, but Kaito slides down the plastic knife he swiped from a cafeteria lady earlier, and Ryoga stares at it like, _what_ , looks up at Kaito like, _what_ , and then voices his concerns like, “What.”

"General human custom,” explains Kaito patiently, demonstrating with his hands. “Often practiced at birthdays."

"Cut the cake, Shork!"

"This is plastic," says Ryoga, testing the ridges with his finger, in case it only _looks_ like plastic. He puts it down. "And it's not my birthday."

"'Cause it's your _birhtday_ ," Yuma says, and he picks up the knife and takes Ryoga's hand in his own, puts the knife in it, doesn't let go. "Want me to help?"

If the video isn't steady because Kaito's trying not to laugh, the only one Ryoga has to blame is himself. The cake is—with some effort—cut, Yuma opens his mouth for Ryoga to drop some in, and Kaito is _so, so_ glad that he has Orbital now, because he is going to sit on this video for the rest of his life, share it with Ryoga’s posterity and maybe the internet, too.

They feast. Kaito was prepared and the others always have room, and apparently Kaito has good taste, because Ryoga doesn't complain about the flavor when Yuma does (since it's anything less than chocolate or straight-up ice cream cake, which, c’mon, he had to carry this around all day, it would’ve melted). They lament their lack of candles and quickly realize that they don’t have plates or forks; Yuma’s shrugs and suggests they just eat it with their hands, but Kaito volunteers to just go and ask for some utensils. Ryoga quietly sets some aside for Rio, and then he thanks them. “It means a lot…”

“Good,” says Yuma. “Just as planned.”

Yuma asks why Ryoga never mentioned it. Ryoga looks away, mutters, “Didn’t come up,”, which is kind of weak as hell, but Kaito wonders if it has anything to do with Durbe and with Barian, ‘cause this time last year… 

So maaaaybe Kaito did some internet stalking. And maybe just over a year ago, Ryoga was deep in his relationship with Durbe, and maybe they thought they’d do their own spin on NaNoWriMo, where they’d upload at least one video between the two of them every day of the month. Maybe Ryoga’s birthday was the eleventh…

It looked like they had a lot of fun. It makes sense for Ryoga to miss it.

(It’s weird knowing certain things about Ryoga, but Ryoga not knowing that he knows. It’s not like Kaito would want to Talk to him about it, but, you know. Weird.)

After they’ve had their party but before the bell rings, Yuma has a question.

“What’re you guys doing over break?"

Kaito is lucky enough in that the company Thanksgiving party was recently made for workers only, so the break’s just a few more days off school… and Mizael may still be waiting for a response, but Kaito already knows his answer. He just hasn’t come up with an excuse yet.

Ryoga’s family doesn’t celebrate the holiday either, so the general consensus is “absolutely nothing.”

Which pleases Yuma very much. “Then you’re both coming to my place!”

“I am?”

“We are?”

“Don’t look at me like that.” Yuma glares at them, arms crossed in what Kaito assumes is Yuma’s best imitation of Ryoga being moody. “It’s not optional. You’re both coming, _and_ you’re bringing your families! Don’t even think about backing out, Ryoga, I’ll just tell Rio.” And before Kaito can smirk, Yuma turns to point an accusing finger at him, too. “And my dad’s inviting yours today, so there’s no backing out for you, either.”

“...Oh,” says Kaito, and doesn’t put in the annoyed, _I mean, why would I ever want to back out?_

See, it’s not just that he doesn’t want to see Mizael or his aunt or his uncle, or Yuma and his family. It’s more like... it’s Thanksgiving. The whole point of the holiday is stuffing your face until you keel over and die, is sitting around with everyone in your family and being thankful or whatever.

Kaito doesn’t feel particularly thankful for anything.

Like, okay. Thanksgiving was sort of a thing with his mom—there wasn’t turkey, but there was a pie, and it tasted good enough, but after that it was all TV, a marathon of specials and then some board games, Kaito and his mother and Haruto and their not-really-Thanksgiving traditions. It was only after her death that he first went to a Real Thanksgiving with Real Turkey and Real Mashed Potatoes and gravy; back when Dad took them to the company thing, Kaito and Haruto were dragged along on a two hour drive somewhere north (they spent the ride playing Pokémon until Kaito got motion sickness and Haruto fell asleep). They’d say hello to all the adults they didn’t know and would likely never see again, they’d indulge in the It Was Okay food, and then they’d drive back again with dead DS batteries. The year the invitation in the mail didn’t include “and family” was a pure blessing.

And then there’s Kaito now. Big family gatherings and food? No thanks.

...He can’t say that to Yuma, of course, can’t say that he doesn’t want to go because he would rather wallow in his misfortunes and maybe contemplate the boy with the long blue hair and the defined eyes, contemplate the word “boyfriend,” and contemplate what it would mean to have one that’s a plane ride away. Ursa University swallows his dreams and houses Christopher Arclight, who probably worries more about Kaito’s stupid health than Kaito does himself—and also offered to pay for a ticket…

Presently, Yuma is appeased. He turns to Ryoga, makes his hand into a fist, stretches it out so that it’s almost touching Ryoga’s nose, and raises his pinky finger. Ryoga stares at it uncomprehendingly.

“Promise,” says Yuma.

“Huh?”

Kaito elbows Ryoga in the ribs and waves his own finger around. “I think he wants a pinky swear, dude.”

Ryoga turns an appropriate shade of pink and turns to Yuma for confirmation. Yuma nods. There is an immediate inquiry as to why Kaito didn’t have to pinky swear.

“Because I’m not a child,” Kaito responds, like, _duh_.

“ _Because_ if Kaito says no I can just ask Haruto and then Kaito will say yes,” corrects Yuma. Kaito wants to respond to that but he can’t actually deny it, so he stays quiet. “You’re not that easy,” Yuma goes on, wiggling his pinky finger, and Ryoga’s eyes follow it back and forth and his cheeks are still tinged pink and his lip quivers into a pout, and Kaito doesn’t think he’s ever been this secondhand embarrassed in his life.

“Come on, Ryoga! You’re not gonna let me down, are you?!”

“Never,” Ryoga mutters under his breath, and Kaito snorts. Ryoga kicks him under the table hard; Kaito hisses, kicks him back harder, but doesn’t get a response this time, because Ryoga’s swallowing hard and staring intently at Yuma’s finger so they can pinky swear exactly right, and there’s no doubt in Kaito’s mind that Ryoga’s planning his future wedding ceremony, just as innocent and chaste and baby butterflies, _Shark Kamishiro weds 9-10-9 Yuma._

The bell rings, Yuma rushes away, and Ryoga continues staring at his pinky like it’s not real.

“C’mon, Mr. Tsukumo,” Kaito says, pushing Rio’s portion of the cake into Ryoga’s hands. “I’m sure Crossit’ll have some advice on how to propose without freezing up.”

Ryoga scowls, but they head out. 

Since it’s his first day back at school in a week and he’s still sporting his lovely black eye, Kaito’s been getting laughs and whispers from kids all over the place, and he’s had to stay after class with every teacher to get a packet with all his catch-up work. It’s not a problem with most of his classes (he can code PacMan in his sleep, probably), but the one teacher he’s not looking forward to talking to about it at all is…

“Kai-toe! Rye-oh-guh!”

...Mr. Crossit, who beams at them and nods concernedly at Kaito’s eye, then asks the two of them to stay after class so they can talk make-ups. Kaito sleeps through most of the class period and forgets to stay back, actually, but then Crossit calls out their names (Ryoga remembered, but was planning on pretending he didn’t) and they groan and they stay.

“It’s nice to see you two again,” Crossit says, and he goes on about how he hopes they enjoyed their glorified vacation, hopes that it gave them plenty of time to cool off and to think about how they’re going to present themselves in class, in lunch, and in the rest of their lives. Kaito nods along, hoping to speed the guy up, but then he starts getting dizzy so he stops, just in time for Crossit to tell them that he gave out the assignments for the baby project last Friday. “So,” he says, clapping his hands together, “Reo-gah—”

“Just say Shark for _your own sake_ —”

“—Unfortunately, your partner was reassigned.” He turns to Kaito. “And _you_ were going to be our single parent, as you requested, but in your absence that honor was given to someone else. So.”

“So?”

Crossit gestures meaningfully at both of them. It’s less that they don’t know what he’s getting at and more that they refuse to believe it until it’s actually said aloud. Crossit’s smile widens.

“I guess,” tries Kaito, “we’re both single parents, then? Our due punishment.”

“Woe is us.”

“Poor Ryoga.” Kaito shakes his head forlornly. “Now he won’t have the faintest chance at passing.”

Kaito’s slip up—and Ryoga’s not minding it—doesn’t go unnoticed by Crossit, and he does this weirdass smile thing, looks way too pleased at himself for figuring something out. He asks, plainly, creepily, in a way that Kaito thinks should get him fired, “Oh? Did you two finally confess?”

It takes a moment.

Kaito and Ryoga stare at each other, stare at Crossit, and step away, eyes wide and mouths open.

“No!”

“Him?”

“Get away from me!”

“What the hell gave you that idea?”

“Oh,” says Crossit, shaking his head. “It’s nothing.” Except that it’s clear that it’s _not_ nothing, that Crossit thinks Ryoga and Kaito Like-Like each other, and so there’re flashbacks to what happened at the party and what goes down in Ryoga’s room stays in Ryoga’s room, right—

“Excuse me,” says Ryoga, “I need to go swallow some bleach.” And he leaves, which is kind of ballsy considering that means it’s up to Kaito to argue their case. And Kaito doesn’t do a particularly good job of it, shows up to English with an official looking document (“For our marriage contract,” he explains, handing Ryoga another sheet with the assignment’s instructions, to which Ryoga can only say, “Holy shit is this legally binding?”) and a box like that of a light bulb, from which comes out…

“What the shit.”

“Congrats,” says Kaito, carefully handing Ryoga the egg-shaped robot baby, which giggles upon shifting hands. “You’re a father.”

“Kaito.”

“Yes, dear?”

“I _hate_ you.”

“Hey,” Kaito smiles pleasantly, and hopes the message of _this wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t a pissbaby_ is properly transmitted. “Not in front of the baby, Shork.”


	16. Simple & Clean

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [CAUSE MAAAAAAAAAYBE YOU'RE GONNA BE THE ONE THAT SAAAAAVES ME](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXjrbhr2mIU)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> SIDE NOTE, anachronistically speaking, "Boyfriend" isn't out yet and "One Thing" has been out for approximately a week. Make of that what you will.

[ _Would you still want me if I were a single dad?_ ]

[ _??????????????????????????????????????????????????_ ]

[ _?_ ]

[ _how did YOU get someone pregnant???_ ]

[ _relax_ ]  
[ _it was only Ryoga_ ]  
[ _we have an eggbaby_ ]

[ _Ryoga?_ ]

[shark.png]

[ _Oh_ ]  
[ _what’s my brother gonna say when i tell him my crush is too busy impregnating nasch to notice me_ ]

[こうはいにきづいてもらいたい!!]

[ _looks like someone figured out google translate_ ]

[を _w_ ]  
[ _WOW_ ]  
[ _no miza types jp sometimes to test me_ ]

[ _miza?_ ]

[ _my girlfriend_ ]

[ _I’m leaving_ ]

[じゃあね]  
[ _HE is my COUSIN_ ]

[ _Kaito you_ ]  
[ _are in a really good mood huh_ ]

[ _Chris me_ ]  
[ _ehhhh_ ]  
[ _well_ ]

[ _?_ ]

[ _my ear is driving me crazy_ ]  
[ _...what do you do when you’re invited to a party but you don’t really want to go?_ ]

[ _change your mind about coming?_ ]

[ _and you don’t want to hurt that person’s feelings_ ]  
[ _no it’s not about that_ ]

[ _why don’t you want to go?_ ]

[ _I don’t anticipate feeling very Thankful_ ]

[ _so say that_ ]

[ _have you met Yuma? he’ll just pay extra attention to the sugar his mom puts on the turkey or something_ ]

[ _“my dad won’t let me”?_ ]

[ _he’s going._ ]

[ _Pretend you’re sick_ ]

[ _like haruto’ll believe me_ ]

[ _feign a diabetic coma_ ]  
[ _actually go INTO a diabetic coma_ ]  
[ _OD_ ]  
[ _hope you get what I’m trying to say?_ ]

[ _.........._ ]  
[ _wait don’t you have class at 7:30_ ]

[ _it’s a lecture_ ]  
[ _Don’t actually get sick._ ]

[ _pay attention._ ]

* * *

Get sick.

It’s not something that’s particularly hard for him, you know, but it’s not something that he usually does on purpose. Or ever does on purpose. Or, you know, enjoys.

Kaito and Haruto have both had terribad immune systems since childhood, and Kaito probably owes the fact that he isn’t dead yet to homeschooling; the first few years in Heartland were pretty bad on him, with traveling germs and all that junk in high school hallways and chairs and probably the food, too. As a frosh, he was knocked out for a solid week once, which meant about a million missed classes and a few hours of make-up work, and Kaito’s had a chip on his shoulder for Mendelian genetics ever since. Like, he deserved an A. Just saying.

Anyway.

What’s a good way to get sick?

He stares at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and pokes his eye. It’s been a week so it’s getting kind of better, but, yeah, still kind of there and— _ow_ , yeah, still kind of sore (he pokes at his piercings, too, which apart from getting kind of red if he fidgets with them too much are okay). At least all of the ice helped…

...Ice. Ice water. Ice cold. Ice drinks. One cold shower, neglected hairdryer, and thinnest outfit he can find later, he’s out the door. Kotori was sick last week at the teahouse, and with any luck, Kaito will be by Thursday.

* * *

Kaito is sick on Thursday.

He’s also at Yuma Tsukumo’s house.

“Thought you weren’t showing up,” Ryoga snickers within minutes of Kaito’s arrival, and Kaito scowls, sneezes, and pushes their daughter—who started crying the second they walked inside the house—into Ryoga’s arms.

“Couldn’t lie to Mizael,” he mutters, because Kaito didn’t get the opportunity to deny his aunt’s invitation—Haruto did, when Mizael visited just that morning to drop something off and asked Haruto about the RSVP since Kaito was being useless again, and Haruto said, no, sorry, they had another party, but maybe at Christmas? And Kaito wasn’t sick enough in the morning or the afternoon for it to be a valid excuse, so he kind of went along with it, _yeah, sorry I forgot to text you, Yuma’s had us booked for a while._

“You lied to me,” Ryoga points out.

“You’re you.” 

“You truly set an example for our child,” says Ryoga, and sticks the eggbaby under his armpit to stifle its cries. Then he nods at Kaito’s attire. “You actually clean up kinda nice when you’re forced into it by your baby brother.”

Kaito’s not sure if he’s being sarcastic or not, because he’s in a sweater vest and pants and Mizael told him to use make up to cover what’s left of his black eye and Kaito just feels kind of stupid. 

But he says, “No worries, _Ryoga_. I’m not here to impress any future in-laws.”

“My parents aren’t here.”

Wow.

Actually, Kaito was planning on showing up in his IV sweater, because it’s comfortable and it would piss Ryoga off, even more-so now that Ryoga knows that Kaito knows about IV and Nasch, but Haruto vetoed it and Kaito left the decision of his wardrobe to his little brother thereafter. Kaito is a bit of a disgrace to the Tenjo name, see; Haruto was voted the most fashionable in his class last year, and could probably have lengthy conversations with Kotori about everything that was wrong with cargo pants (Kaito doesn’t know the answer, but assumes there is one). Mizael and Haruto, it seems, are already planning on gleefully rummaging through everything Kaito owns once winter break rolls around. Maybe Mizael will fly him out to the East Coast for a shopping spree, too.

Whatever. Ryoga makes fun of him, but Ryoga came in a deep purple hoodie and jeans with tears at the knees, so.

“Maybe you should get Rio to dress you next time,” Kaito suggests.

“Maybe you should shut up,” Ryoga counters smartly, with the cup of punch he presumably came upstairs to get—all the kids are apparently in the basement—leads Kaito to the stairs… and then walks right past them and into the guest room. There he sets the cup and their baby down (she cries, like she always does when they’re together), and closes the door. Stares at Kaito appraisingly, clicks his tongue. Tilts his head, leans in, aaaand…

...draws back, asks, “Bring your concealer?”

“...What?”

“Your concealer,” Ryoga repeats, putting his arm out expectantly. “Whatever it is you used on your face. Don’t think anything we find here’ll work on your whiteass skin.”

“I… you…” Kaito tries, confused, but he _does_ , it’s in his pocket, because he ended up putting it there instead of on the counter in the bathroom when they left. He pulls it out and places it in Ryoga’s proffered hand. Ryoga appraises it, nods to himself, and then draws in to fix it.

“It’d be better if we had some colors,” Ryoga remarks, taking his sweetass time, and oh crap Kaito has to sneeze _Ryoga now would be a fantastic time to get your dumb 17-year-old face out of_ my _face_ , and Kaito tries to hold it in but kind of fails so he scrunches up his nose and probably gets some spit on Ryoga when the sneeze comes out.

“A mess,” Ryoga says, clearing his face with a scowl and his sleeve, and Kaito shrugs. Ryoga looks at his eye again, dabs some more concealer on and tells Kaito to spread it himself this time—except, no, he decides that Kaito will just screw it up again and so Ryoga does it himself, then clicks his tongue like that’s the best he can do. Turns Kaito around to look in the guest room’s mirror. “Now you look less like a tomato.”

“You’re the one who hit me.”

“You’re the one who asked for it.”

While Kaito admires the handiwork, Ryoga’s out the door, bouncing the eggbaby in his arms.

“You coming?”

Kaito follows him out.

Downstairs, there’s nothing but loud video game noises and teenagers shouting in conjunction with them: Kaito comes down to find Yuma and Rio—and Haruto, who Yuma helped down—deep in a round of Brawl, and it’s not hard to tell that Rio just got the Smash Ball.

“Kaito!” Yuma shouts and jumps up and off the sofa, pausing the game to launch in for an unexpected hug.

“Uh,” says Kaito, who didn’t realize he was missed this much over the past, uh, single day. “Hi?”

“Ryoga said you weren’t coming,” Yuma says, sticking his tongue out at the gambler, and Ryoga grumbles something or other about how you can’t trust Kaito with things like parties, but Yuma doesn’t catch the hidden meaning. Instead he pulls Kaito and Ryoga down on the sofa, Ryoga on his one side and Kaito on the other, the three of them sinking into the cushions, so comfortable that it’s almost awkward. Haruto’s on the single and Rio’s in the swivel chair by a desk in the corner, a cup full of apple juice and a phone bursting with messages sitting next to her on a desk piled with Yuma’s textbooks. 4P is pushed into Kaito’s hands by Haruto, who’s good at Brawl, really, but he’s eager to see how well Niisan fares against something other than a CPU.

They start a game and Kaito automatically heads for Ike and Ryoga for the Ice Climbers (who uses _Ice Climbers?_ ), while Yuma is Kirby, keeps spamming Down+B and taunting his annoying “Hiiiii!” Rio plays as Sheik and kicks all of their asses—mostly by virtue of not being Ryoga or Kaito, who spend most of the game fighting each other, but Ryoga maintains that it’s because Sheik is his _true_ main, and Ice Climbers not even his second best.

“Stop whining,” says Rio, so Ryoga aims for winning, and they go another round, and another, and another. They play and play until Ryoga’s drink runs out and so does Rio’s; play with teams (Haruto’s Link to Kaito’s Toon Link vs Ryoga’s Sheik to Rio’s Zelda is the most memorable); play with bunny ears and on fire; play No Items, Fox Only, Final Destination (Kaito wins that one; Fox is one of his mains). They play until Yuma’s mom calls them from upstairs and they scramble up to the table, their stomachs rumbling from all the room they’ve left by not eating lunch. Kaito’s body is weirding out on him because he isn’t following his usual schedule and having a cold doesn’t help, but he’s brought along all of his dumb gear in a bag he left in the car should anything go wrong. Pills are in his pocket for after dinner.

At the top of the stairs, Kaito meets Mirai Tsukumo. She’s got this long, blonde hair that’s totally natural and these soft, red eyes of which Yuma’s stolen the color but hasn’t got the quietness, and when she smiles he remembers his mom, too.

Is it just a mom thing? Or something else?

She, of course, says his name right.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Kaito,” and then she asks him how he’s doing like she’s known him all his life, like she used to babysit him on Saturday mornings or when he was alone and his mom and dad were arguing, and a warmth spreads through him and settles at the front of his chest. Kaito hasn’t heard much about Yuma’s mom; he knows she exists and he knows that Yuma loves her and she loves her son, just from the way that the guy talks about her at lunch and from the look she gives him now as she asks how’s school and how’s his eye, Yuma said he was hurt but it doesn’t look so bad, is he alright? Is he enjoying himself?

And Mirai’s Thanksgiving feast?

“Whoa.”

It’s Japanese.

Kaito knows that Yuma has a home-cooked meal every day, knows because he figures as much since the kid gets a freaking _bento_ for lunch, but for some reason he wasn’t expecting _this_ to be Japanese—but there it is. Settled around a turkey, sure, but it’s seasoned with soy sauce and snug with enoki and daikon and a few other things that he can recognize but can’t put a name to, but assuredly make it actually taste like something. Home-cooked and authentic Japanese food that Kaito’s not had in a long, long while, not only because he can’t make any, but because his mother wasn’t much for it, either, and when he was a kid he was far more likely to demand dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets instead of onigiri when it came time for a snack.

Mizael’s mom, though. New Year’s was Kaito’s favorite time of year for a reason.

So when he sees this, he kind of stares.

“Something wrong, Kaito?”

But his face brightens and he shakes his head.

“Nah,” he assures Yuma’s mother. “I just remembered something.”

Kazuma, Faker, and Haruto are already seated. Mirai takes the seat next to her husband and beckons for Rio to sit next to her. Upon his younger brother’s invitation, Kaito sits next to Haruto, and Ryoga next to his sister—so the two of them end up across from each other—and the last seat goes to Yuma, the head of the second half of the table.

Kazuma clears his throat.

“First,” he says, “I want to welcome you for coming. It’s unfortunate that my mother and daughter aren’t in the States with us today, but I am humbled by the presence of friends.

“I want to acknowledge first that this ‘holiday’ was established and continues to be taught in schools as something of a joke. It is built on genocide. Our home is on what was once their home, something they were stripped of. Thanksgiving Day is not built on the myth of pilgrim friendship.”

“Perhaps the unity of credit card and cash register,” Mirai puts in, and there’s a run of laughter.

“In any case,” Kazuma continues, “the official holiday does give our kids a day off from school and our workers a day off from work, and if nothing else, it’s a well-deserved break. It gives us time with each other…” He looks meaningfully at Kaito’s dad, and Kaito gets the feeling they might’ve had an Important conversation about family time while he was downstairs, and tries not to groan.

His phone vibrates in his pocket. He considers checking it, checking what Chris might have to say now, about how much fun he’s having at his college party with so many of the guys gone from the dorms, but there’s something about Kazuma Tsukumo that makes it feel way too disrespectful to pull out a gadget while the man’s giving a speech.

That is, until Ryoga nudges him under the table.

[ _i am soooooo hungry rn_ ]

Kaito rolls his eyes, checks to see if Kazuma’s paying attention, then types out his response.

[ _why don’t you excuse yourself to go feed the baby or something_ ]

[ _her NAME is DOLPHIN_ ]

[ _i’m not naming our child after a porpoise_ ]

[ _I’M not naming her STARLIEGE_ ]  
[ _literally wtf_ ]

Kazuma finishes his speech while they’re texting, and the next thing they know they’ve been swept into all mentioning something they’re all thankful for this season anyway, “just in the interest of fostering friendship.”

There’s a loud groan from Ryoga, who apparently thought he would be joined by some other people, but ended up just sounding alone and obnoxious.

They go oldest-to-youngest, so Haruto starts by listing off the names of his family and his friends, Dad and Miza-nii and Droite and Gauche, signed off with, “Hm, did I miss anyone?” to which he looks pointedly at Kaito and gives him a wink and a hug.

For Yuma it is, of course, his friends. That’s not even a _question_ , and he wants to hug Kaito and Ryoga, too, but Kaito’s already reached his quota so he politely declines, and Ryoga mutters a, “Maybe later.”

Attention turns to the twins; Kaito and Yuma, who know that Ryoga is older because they’re friends, look expectantly at Rio, while the adults look at Ryoga, maybe expecting him to be younger because of his baby fat, maybe expecting him to be younger because, Kaito thinks, Ryoga’s still a baby. Maybe he should’ve gone before Haruto.

Kaito gets an idea, takes out his phone, sets up a message. But he doesn’t hit send just yet.

Rio goes the generic and corny route and says that she’s grateful for her parents and the Tsukumos for graciously inviting them to dinner on this, uh, federal holiday.

Then it’s Ryoga’s turn. Kaito hits send.

“I’m thankful for…”

[ _Yuma_ ]

“...Kaito,” says Ryoga, the words bleeding sarcasm, and he smiles thinly. “I don’t know what I’d _do_ without him.” He puts up his glass like he’s giving Kaito a toast, which would be fantastic if all of their glasses weren’t plastic and empty.

“And I’m thankful for Ryoga.” Kaito smiles serenely and clinks the cup. Kicks Ryoga under the table, too. “I’d be _lost_ without him.”

They both make to drink, except that they’re lacking in something _to_ drink, so Kazuma casually tells Yuma to fill up their guests’ glasses and Mirai stifles a laugh and Haruto and Rio both look super embarrassed on behalf of their siblings, while Yuma fills up their glasses with sparkling cider and Ryoga and Kaito have to do a real toast this time—to Yuma.

Then it’s the adults’ turns. They make those dumb adult jokes that people laugh at but aren’t actually amusing, just those adult anecdotes about adult life. He zones them out for the most part, Mirai with the sweet voice of which he listens to the melody and Kazuma with the tone of a father who does it right, and then his own dad, Dr. Faker, who goes last and Kaito doesn’t really wanna hear it, so he pulls out his phone again.

Finally, it’s time to dig in.

The food is fantastic, but the conversation over the meal tends to swerve in different directions and Kaito’s hit square in the chest with fifty questions he’d rather not answer, typical questions that he’s usually hit with at his dad’s parties, too, but here it’s ten times worse because he actually cares for the Tsukumos’ opinions of him.

Mirai asks him if he’s started applying for schools yet, since she knows the early action deadlines are coming up—Mirai herself, it turns out, is an assistant professor of anthropology at a university nearby—and Kaito has to say that he’s “working on his common app,” which is to say that he looked at a copy of it in his dumb future class, scowled at it, and hasn’t seen it since.

Kazuma asks Ryoga if he’s got a girlfriend, and Kaito chokes so violently over his teriyaki that Yuma jumps out of his chair, ready to give him the heimlich. 

So of course Ryoga goes, “No, but you should ask Kaito all about that kind of stuff,” and the adults oblige. Faker looks especially curious when the subject of Kaito’s significant others is brought up, and in the pit of his stomach Kaito can feel the word _boyfriend_ weighing down on him… but he replies that he isn’t particularly interested in relationships at the moment, which, he’s not sure if that’s true, but it gets the adults off his back. Kazuma picks up where Kaito leaves off, dives into a life lesson/anthropology story about love and where to find it; it’s all very sweet and lovely, and would continue to be so if Ryoga would stop sending Kaito baby name suggestions under the table.

[ _Jessica_ ]

[ _no_ ]

[ _Mary_ ]

[ _no_ ]

[ _Katie_ ]

[ _NO_ ]

[ _Ryan_ ]

[ _I thought it was a girl_ ]

[ _WOW be more open MINDED_ ]  
[ _chastity_ ]

[ _ryoga what_ ]  
[ _okay can it not be super white_ ]  
[ _if it auto-corrects it’s out_ ]

[ _sakura_ ]

[ _really_ ]

Halfway through the story, while he’s passing the water jug, he casually inserts, “Boys, no technology at the table,” into the narrative, and Kaito and Ryoga drop their phones in their laps and refrain from any messages or eye-contact for the rest of dinner.

They resume swiftly after, when Ryoga and Kaito both need to get something from their cars, so they go together.

“Ryoko.”

“No.”

“Kaiko.”

“ _No_.”

“Hana.”

“Too generic.”

In the dark of the night, Kaito recognizes the shape of Ryoga’s bag.

“You brought your guitar,” Kaito notes.

Ryoga scowls, even though Kaito did his best to sound neutral. “Yuma told his dad I play.”

“Yeah?”

“I swear to god if you don’t wipe that smirk off your face I’m going to rope you in as my back-up vocals.”

With his cold and not being one to sing anyway, Kaito figured that he’d only make Ryoga sound worse. “Sure,” he says, and starts: “If I was your boyfriend I’d never let you go, keep you on my arm—”

“—Chris—”

“— _Yuma_ , you’d never be alone. I could be a Shark, anything you want—”

“You’re disturbingly familiar with Justin Bieber for a hikikomori.”

They head to the sitting room, where the adults are already having a conversation about whatever it is adults talk about, and Kaito plops himself down on a chair, pops two pills, and watches Ryoga set up and Rio help him. Yuma and Haruto are having an urgent conversation in the corner, which only quiets down when Ryoga’s done tuning and, satisfied, clears his throat.

“Whatcha gonna sing, Shark?” asks Yuma, and Kaito’s confused.

“Since when do you call him Shark?”

“One of us has to, don’t you think?”

Not really, no, and Ryoga kind of seems to mind, so Kaito goes ahead and says, “Hmm, no, I think Ryoga likes it when people who’re close to him say his real name.”

“That why you switched? You two closer now?”

“Sure,” says Kaito. “Punching someone in the face is how I get closer to all _my_ friends.”

Eggbaby marriage? Nah.

“Makes sense,” replies Ryoga, nodding. “Kaito doesn’t have much of a hook, so.”

“You guys never told me why you fought to begin with,” says Yuma.

“Kaito—”

“ _Ryoga_ —”

They both stop.

In short: “We were doing that thing again.”

Yuma shakes his head but he’s satisfied with that answer, and since Ryoga’s done setting up he calls the others, proclaiming that Ryoga’ll sing whatever they ask and he’s the best around—even though Yuma, as far as Kaito knows, hasn’t actually heard Ryoga play.

“So are you taking requests from the audience?” asks Kaito.

“Not from you,” answers Ryoga, and he starts something that sounds familiar in the way that all teeny bopper hits do. He sings:

  
_I've tried playing it cool_   
_But when I'm looking at you_   
_I can’t ever be brave_   
_'Cause you make my heart race_   


And, fine, yeah, it sounds good, it _sounds_ great, but Kaito can’t believe Ryoga wrote it himself and then had the balls to sing it in front of Yuma and his parents, ‘cause the lyrics themselves make Kaito burst into laughter and he has to duck out into the next room over to laugh it out. But everyone else seems to enjoy it, and Yuma in particular, so that’s good, there ya go, and then whenever everyone claps for him and says, “Wow, that was actually really good,” Ryoga is probably offended because, yeah, it should be, he’s good enough to merit a verified on Twitter.

Haruto is familiar with NASCH because Kaito hasn’t stopped looping the YouTube videos and he’s kind of starstruck.

“Did you write that yourself?” he asks, because he hasn’t heard it, but Ryoga shakes his head, and Rio supplies with a laugh, “One Direction.” Kaito snorts, but Yuma’s nodding like he thinks he’s heard it before, he knew it sounded familiar, but Ryoga is totally better than the original!

“Encore!”

“I guess I can do one more,” grunts Ryoga. “Nothing I wrote, you’ll have to buy ‘em. Anyway. Here’s ‘Wonderwall.’”

  
_Today is gonna be the day that they’re gonna throw it back to you_   
_By now you should’ve somehow realized what you gotta do_   
_I don’t believe that anybody feels the way I do_   
_About you now_   


… _God_.

Kaito wants to laugh, this is a joke, right, but this time he _can’t_ , because the words sort of… hit home, sort of hit heart, and he frowns and he feels the phone in his pocket and slinks out of the room again because he thought it felt it vibrate, but it… didn’t. 

Shit.

He goes into his messages again anyway, just to—just to, you know, see what his last message was with Christopher Arclight, and it’s something Kaito sent and he doesn’t want to send another after it. Doesn’t want to be the one to initiate the conversation every time, even though he knows that Chris likes talking to him just as much as Kaito likes talking to Chris.

  
_And all the roads that lead you there are winding_   
_And all the lights that light the way are blinding_   
_There are many things that I would like to say to you_   
_But I don’t know how_   


Ryoga finishes and everyone applauds, and then Yuma starts being in the mood to sing, too, so the adults shuffle the kids back downstairs to do whatever it is that teenagers do (Smash, of course, while Yuma sings off-key to 'Simple and Clean' and tries to rope Kaito and Ryoga into joining him, _come on guys, don’t even try to pretend you don’t know the words_ , and Rio continues to kick their asses, even when they do 3v1).

Evening stretches into night and Kaito starts getting anxious at the same time that he’s really… not, just sort of misses his room and his bed in the way that you miss it ‘cause that’s usually where you are on Thursday nights, even if he’s enjoying himself. Haruto starts to get tired and rests his head against Kaito’s shoulder and falls asleep, his steady breathing and his heartbeat warm and relaxing against the shouts and yells and manic buttonsmashing. And when the games become so automatic that he’s barely paying attention to what moves he’s making anymore, Kaito starts to sing, too, a quiet, _hold me, whatever lies beyond this morning_ , and Yuma catches him, _is a little later on_ , and then looks to Ryoga expectantly.

Ryoga sighs, rolls his eyes.

_Regardless of warnings, the future doesn’t scare me at all…_

* * *

Mirai is the one who first brings up the idea of a sleepover, does it at midnight so it’s basically already a sleepover, ‘cause the boys—stuffed and tired and kind of bored—are already embarrassingly snuggled to each other, Haruto on Kaito on Yuma on Ryoga. Rio’s on her phone in the corner because Rio has friends; Rio, who brought out her charger and is content refreshing Twitter and Tumblr and Facebook until she’s reached her limit and goes to shake her brother awake, _hey, we going home or not?_ And then everyone else wakes up, too, and head upstairs to bother Faker and Kazuma, who were apparently so deep in a conversation about work they’d totally forgotten they were at a party.

“Well, you’re already here, so why not stay over?” Mirai offers. “We’ve got extra toothbrushes and Yuma has pajamas he hasn’t worn yet.”

They see the light on Yuma’s face before Mirai even finishes, see the excitement and the glee even though they were all bored or asleep or falling asleep five minutes ago, and Yuma’s planning their escapades already, Kaito can tell. The words burst out in a flurry and Yuma mentions some star assignment in Physics that they were just assigned yesterday and they could all do it together, right, ‘cause Kaito must’ve done it already and he can help, it sounded kind of hard—and, yeah, Kaito remembers that assignment, and it was a breeze. Something about going outside and locating constellations and trying to figure out where they are using crude thumb-and-finger angle measures.

But neither Kaito nor Ryoga is really in the mood to stay over, both too introverted to extrovert for a whole day.

_Achoo!_

And Kaito’s kind of sick.

(And maybe he wants to talk to Chris a little before he goes to bed tonight, too).

Ryoga’s excuse is a bit more valid: he has to take Rio home, because she’s been patient with him all night only ‘cause he promised to give her a ride to Kotori’s tomorrow, and even then she only came because Ryoga was under the impression that Kaito wouldn’t be there and he’d be alone with Yuma. Which. Ahem.

So for tonight, at least, any sleepover plans are vetoed. Yuma’s put-out, but he’s upbeat enough to say, “Okay, next time!” 

Kaito and Ryoga look at each other, mulling over the idea of a next time, and Kaito offers a “we’ll see” to Ryoga’s “maybe.” And at 12:06AM on Friday, Kaito and Ryoga leave Yuma’s house full of food and a kind of sleepiness that only comes after you’ve had fun, after you’ve felt comfortable, after you’ve been around your friends for so long that you need to relax from your relaxation.

Kaito and Haruto both sit in the back seat on the drive home and Haruto falls asleep on Kaito again, and Kaito falls asleep against the window himself, his phone in his hands but the messages unread. So it's when they get home and Faker carries Haruto inside (Kaito’s too tired to protest) that Kaito stares at his phone, and there's Ryoga, deciding that tonight wasn't so bad, don't you think, and there's Chris, hoping that Kaito didn't actually get sick.

[ _I got sick_ ] Kaito tells Chris, who is at a party of his own with some other guys in his dorm. Chris didn’t go home on his days off because it isn't Thanksgiving in Canada, so his brothers and his dad would all be busy while Chris lounged in a room that they'd rather use for storage.

Chris doesn't respond right away and Kaito kind of feels a bit lonely in that yeah, he was at a party, too, but he kind of wishes that Chris were here or Kaito were there, some real life interaction to make up for the fact that Kaito was quite the asshole when they actually had the opportunity to speak.

Ryoga’s song is still suck in his head.

He wonders how Chris’s turkey went. Chris said that he’s shit at cooking, that his youngest brother’s the one who’s really into recipes and stuff and Chris could make really good macaroni and cheese if he prayed really hard and the stars aligned right, but his roommate wants to try anyway.

So, naturally, Kaito wonders if the stars were in his favor tonight.

He plans on asking as much once Chris is finished and actively responding. He plans on telling Chris most of his day, too, because he's been doing that a lot lately, just sort of sharing himself. It's therapeutic, it's nice, and he feels lighter for it. No more dumb poetry; he can burn those notebooks in the bonfire at the end of senior term.

He responds to Ryoga next, agrees that tonight wasn't so bad, doesn't say that he enjoyed himself and he enjoyed the food and that Ryoga sings good, doesn't say that he felt warm and he felt welcome when they were on that couch together because god he doesn't want people touching him but when it just sort of happens it's okay. 

Doesn't say that Mirai Tsukumo reminds him of his mom and treated him like he wishes his dad would.

Doesn't say that lately it seems like his dad actually _does_ treat him that way and Kaito just never realized. It’s kind of scary to think about: Kaito thought his dad was as apathetic as Kaito is spiteful, that Faker only takes care of him out of some sense of duty. But maybe it’s... love?

Kaito doesn't say that he really actually maybe fine okay yes goddammit he really _is_ thankful for Ryoga, that he doesn't think he'd be totally lost without him but he does appreciate him, and _god_ does he appreciate Yuma Tsukumo, because if it weren't for Yuma Tsukumo, Kaito would never have sat at that table. If it weren't for Yuma Tsukumo, Kaito might not have even gone to school; if it weren't for Yuma Tsukumo, Kaito wouldn't've met Ryoga Kamishiro the way he did, wouldn't call him Ryoga, wouldn’t find himself becoming something he hasn’t been for a long, long time.

Someone happy.

He doesn't say all that, but he thinks that Ryoga sort of gets the message anyway.

[ _tomorrow maybe?_ ]

[ _ig i do have to do this assignment_ ]

* * *

[ _WHAT THE FUCK_ ]  
[ _IT FUCKING PISSED ON ME_ ]

[ _it can piss_ ]  
[ _potty train it_ ]

[ _WHY DON’T YOU POTTY TRAIN IT_ ]


	17. Miserable & Magical

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may be off on the exact constellations visible on November 25, 2011 in a suburb off LA, but I'm going to go ahead and assume you'll forgive me if I'm a month off.
> 
> I don't know if there's anyone in ZEXAL fandom who doesn't read [Prisoners of Fate](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9376652/1/Prisoners-of-Fate), but you should do the thing! 
> 
> Cheers!

[ _why do we have to name her anyway_ ]

[ _so that we’ll feel remorse when you inevitably murder it, i guess_ ]

[ _I’m NOT going to murder our DAUGHTER_ ]

[ _you are getting way too attached to this thing_ ]

[ _maybe, wait for it_ ]  
[ _maybe_ ]  
[ _i want an A_ ]  
[ _also_ ]  
[ _she responds to iris now_ ]  
[ _whoops_ ]

[ _iris._ ]

[ _it’s a pretty name ok_ ]

[ _aaaaaaaand it’s purple_ ]  
[ _ryoga._ ]

[ _pretty name for my pretty daughter_ ]

[ _it’s literally a robot egg_ ]  
[ _...*OUR PRETTY DAUGHTER_ ]

[鳶が鷹を生んだ]

[ _I have no idea what that says and you probably don’t either_ ]

[ _<http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%E9%B3%B6%E3%81%8C%E9%B7%B9%E3%82%92%E7%94%9F%E3%82%93%E3%81%A0>_ ]

[ _Divorce._ ]

* * *

Among the thoughts of marriage and divorce, Kaito dreams that he’s a prince.

Come morning he doesn’t remember the specifics of the dream outside of his own deal—it was _sick_ , he had a tattoo on his eye like a gazer from _Duel Monsters_ and a sword that was an extension of his soul or something—but he does recall Chris being in it and Ryoga being in it and Yuma was there, too, and it was one hell of a fantasy adventure, rife with political intrigue and competing religions and tragedy and, uh romance too. And even though he’s pretty sure half of them were about to die right as he woke up, it was… well, really super cool. 

But maaaybe too many video games.

In the real world his eyes blink open and he squeezes them shut again, hoping that he can sneak back in and find out how the fantasy ends, but Orbital’s going off non-stop with messages from Yuma, and Kaito’s feeling around the bed but he can’t find his phone. He’s usually careful to keep it on the nightstand when he goes to sleep so he won’t, like, crush it or something, but somehow Orbital ended up under his back anyway, probably because he doesn’t actually remember falling asleep.

His wrist kind of hurts. Phone typing while lying down is hard. Doing it all night may not have been wise.

But you know? 

Friday, the 25th of November: Kaito woke up smiling. Stretched in his sheets and didn’t want to leave bed the way he never wants to leave bed, but this time there was something different. This time he felt comfortable under the covers, with his pillow, and in his skin.

He’s looking forward to tonight. Ryoga, Yuma, Kaito, and the sky; Ryoga and Yuma have a star-mapping project, Kaito did it two years ago and said he’ll help them out, Yuma told ‘em to bring their decks and Ryoga says he’s on snacks, so all Kaito has to do is bring a sleeping bag and his attitude.

His room is clean and he pulls on a shirt and some actual pants and goes down to have breakfast. Greets Haruto with a smile and finds himself humming the opening theme to a game he hasn’t played in years—something like _Parappa the Rapper_ or _Donkey Kong Country_ —even though he’s still sneezing and a little sick. Heads upstairs again to pack.

Ryoga’s idea was that they stay at a park; he suggested a place right by Barian Academy where he and his friends used to stay late and so he knows it’s safe, but it was vetoed by Yuma’s dad in favor of somewhere closer by—namely, Yuma’s backyard. It puts a damper on the whole adventure aspect of it, but Yuma’s porch is big and his parents promise not to help with anything at all, so the guys go with what they have, pack blankets and pillows and flashlights and unhealthy snacks.

Kaito’s bruise is almost gone, too.

For the rest of the day, time goes by slowly. The only thing that makes it go any faster is their group chat, which hums periodically with Ryoga asking if Kaito will die if he brings popcorn or Yuma reminding them to bring extra pillows so they can build themselves a ceilingless fortress.

[ _Hang on, Ryoga. If I didn’t know you better I’d think you’re actually looking forward to this_ ]

[ _of course i am, kaito_ ]  
[ _it’s iris’s first outing, after all_ ]

[ _who’s iris???_ ]  
[ _no girls allowed!!!_ ]

[ _Don’t worry about it, Yuma._ ]

[ _your goddaughter_ ]

[ _adoptive daughter once his assassination plan goes through and he’s in jail_ ]

[ _who told you about the poison_ ]

Each time it quiets down, Kaito plays with his phone, opens apps and tries a mobile game for a few seconds before hitting home. Slides his home screen this way and that, changes the wallpaper when it’s locked and when it’s open, assigns Ryoga a custom text alert that sounds like a fart noise (then switches it to the MGS spotted sound effect). Orbital protests at all this, warms at his touch and loses battery quicker than usual, but Kaito just plugs it in and keeps going. Surfs the web a little (check’s NASCH’s twitter—Ryoga has a good 10k followers, and chances are that his mentions will always have someone meme-ing at him). Wonders how the weather will be. Looks it up, and is reminded that it will simply be “LA winter.”

Eventually, he falls into rereading texts (again). Reads his history with Yuma, which has mostly been a chain of emoji and cat pics since Kaito upgraded, but also includes “good mornings” and “good nights!” whenever Yuma remembers. Reads his history with Ryoga, easily the longest to scroll through, mostly because they’re short, quick, and snipped responses, both of them snarking each other until one of them runs out of things to insult with; rinse and repeat. Reads his history with Mizael, easily the shortest but possibly the most difficult to get through: at Kaito’s request, Mizael texts in Japanese when he remembers, and Kaito tries to text back in it, too, except that Mizael uses kanji sometimes and Kaito doesn’t, so… well, there’s a reason he has Google Translate bookmarked.

Then, of course, there is Chris.

By some miracle of modern technology, every word he and Chris exchanged on his old Nokia? They tagged along to this phone, too, so he can read them in chronological order and relive the embarrassment in one convenient place. This time the embarrassment at something Chris said is escorted by the embarrassments that are Kaito’s responses ( _why_ did he tell Chris about the kiss?), and Kaito is probably blushing. Ryoga would probably make a white boy joke or call him a tomato or a strawberry or something, and Kaito would totally deserve it.

He keeps going anyway and somehow gets through without dying of embarrassment, UST, or both. His heart contorts every time he sees the green bubble.

Kaito still hasn’t responded to Chris’s question.

Like… Okay, he wonders if Ryoga would think he’s being stupid. Kaito’s crush asked him out and Kaito’s answer is “pending.” Wouldn’t Ryoga leap at a chance to hold Yuma’s hand, once Yuma asks Ryoga out or realizes that Ryoga’s _been_ asking him out? But Yuma and Ryoga are different from Kaito and Chris, aren’t they, different in age and location and feelings for each other, because what Ryoga feels for Yuma is a really bad, really embarrassing crush, and Kaito thinks that’s how he felt with Chris before but now it… might be something… worse… 

He feels weird having that thought. Thinking “first love” instead of “first crush,” and then remembering that Kaito knows for a fact that his and Chris’s romantic affection is mutual, something of which Ryoga’s got no confirmation. Hell, they don’t even know if Yuma _gets_ crushes.

So why hasn’t Kaito responded to Chris yet, if they’ve both got feelings for each other? Distance? Baggage? Depression? Because he feels dumb? Because he… has difficulty imagining himself in a relationship, and he has difficulty figuring out what “a relationship” even means? 

What does it mean to be someone’s boyfriend, especially when you’re nowhere near him? If they start dating it’s… well, it’s really just a title, isn’t it, does it mean anything when they can’t touch each other or be next to each other or do Boyfriend Things, whether it be, ah, kissing—god—or holding… hands…— _god_ —or just being in each other’s presence, listening to music from one device, one bud in Kaito’s ear and one in Chris’s? God, what does it _mean_? 

Dating is weird. Kaito likes Chris and Chris likes Kaito, why does the next step have to be so weird and complicated and… just… ???

???

Yeah. That’s how he’d describe it. Question marks, because there is no word or sound to embody this feeling.

But the way he figures it switches from crush to love is that he… it’s starting to be less embarrassing, you know? Less like something funny in his stomach and more like a kind of strength coursing through him, it’s not embarrassing to like someone who cares about you and it’s not embarrassing to care about them back. It’s not… embarrassing… for him to love Christopher Arclight.

...Right?

Right.

Time starts to turn again, and Yuma and his dad have just left the house to pick him up, so Kaito should be ready.

With a new steadiness in his heart he pockets his phone and his charger and his deck, goes downstairs to kiss Haruto on the forehead and maybe even waves goodbye to his old man, tells them to try not to screw anything up in his absence, and that washing the dishes doesn’t count as “screwing up.” Heads outside just as Kazuma Tsukumo pulls up. Slides into the backseat alone.

When they’re in mixed company, Kazuma always speaks in English, but with just Yuma and Kaito, he seems more comfortable in Japanese. Kaito tries to respond to any questions pointed his way in the language they’re posed—feels like it’s more respectful that way, and doesn’t want to let Kazuma down—but halfway through one sentence he gives up because he can’t figure out how to conjugate something to fit with what he’s saying. Kazuma laughs and compliments him, saying he did wonderfully and that it’s okay, he shouldn’t worry about it too much. After all, it’s not completely expected of him.

“It’s part of me,” Kaito says, a little insulted. “Half.”

“Forgive me,” says Kazuma. “It wasn’t about your blood or your skin, only location. If you want to try, I can only encourage you to pursue it. _Kattobing_ , Kaito.”

Kaito still doesn’t know what that means. He gets the feeling it’s something like ‘do your best.’

“I will.”

* * *

The stars come out just as they finish setting up their things, when Mirai’s gone inside and been persuaded to leave them alone for the night, because this is _supposed_ to be a camping trip for the three of them, no girls allowed, and the only exception is Iris, who, upon a change of parental hands, promptly begins to make vomiting sound effects and spray Kaito with an excessive amount of water, has a leaking diaper, and needs to be burped.

“You refilled the water for the ride here,” Kaito deadpans, because his partner is _so_ thoughtful.

“Yep,” says Ryoga, and claps invisible dust off his hands for a job well-done. Kaito rolls his eyes and wonders if this is less a baby project and more an exercise in how not to use an innocent third party to get at your partner.

The stank eye directed at Ryoga receives a scowl and a, “Y’know it’s supposed to be impossible to break an eggshell with your fist?”

“What?!” puts in Yuma, who’s shutting the patio door behind him and smells like the movie theater popcorn he was sent to retrieve. “Don’t tell me you choked your kid!”

Kaito inspects the baby for damage. It giggles. “Not successfully.”

“Not _that_ ,” says Ryoga, “I meant a _real_ egg.”

Kaito rocks Iris in his arms, coos, “Ssh, it’s okay, he didn’t mean it. You’re real to _me_.”

“Hey, Yuma, eggs are in the fridge, right?”

“Please don’t try to break my mom’s eggs,” says Yuma, and definitely doesn’t catch his double entendre, because when Kaito and Ryoga stop and Kaito bursts out laughing and Ryoga flushes, Yuma looks at them like he’s out of the loop. “You guys are so weird. Do you wanna help me set up?”

They do. Yuma takes Iris in his arms and makes Kaito and Ryoga do all the work, which amounts to laying down a picnic blanket and their sleeping bags, piling blankets and pillows around them so they’ve basically got a nest going. They switch on the patio light so they can see the homework once it’s spread out; Ryoga brought his tablet to record the answers without a problem, but Yuma didn’t, so he squints at the worksheets in the dim yellow lighting and Kaito has to shine his phone’s flashlight over Yuma’s shoulder before anything can really get done.

The assignment isn’t simple. Identifying early winter constellations is the easy part; doing it based on other stars isn’t _too_ hard; but the actual physics is the calculations, because their teacher wants them to figure out the stars’ angles with their hands, which is tedious and difficult to bullshit.

Kaito does most of the constellation finding.

“Look, see that?” he says, moving Yuma to see where Kaito’s pointing, the three that make the belt. “Orion.”

“O-rye-what?”

“Orion,” Kaito repeats. “The Hunter. He was basically Artemis’s lover before Apollo tricked her into sniping him. The three stars make up his—”

“Looks like a bunch of stars to me,” says Ryoga. “Can we cut the crap and just get this done?”

Kaito purses his lips and nods. Down from the belt to Sirius and Canis Major; up to Taurus. Gemini is up from the bottom-right… Do you see anything by Taurus? That circle is Cetus’s head…

Yuma gives up at taking down his notes—he’ll nab them from Ryoga and his tablet later. The three of them lie down, Yuma’s head by Kaito’s shoulder and them cuddled together as the night goes on and their bodies settle to the temperature. They’re not really comfortable enough to sleep, but for this, body heat is enough. The air is cool on his face and he feels asleep and awake all at once, like there’s something in the atmosphere that makes it alive.

It’s the perfect weather to hold someone’s hand.

“You’re really good at this, Kaito. Must’ve studied hard if you still remember now.”

“Not really,” Kaito says, and hesitates before admitting in a murmur, “My mom knew it all. She taught me.” She taught Haruto, too, but Haruto was only six years old when she died, so Kaito barely expects him to remember her face, nevermind the alignment of the stars.

Still, Kaito heard his little brother hum something familiar the other day. “...There was a song.”

“A song?”

“That she used to teach us.”

Yuma and Ryoga both prop themselves up to look at him.

“Don’t look at me like that. I don’t remember.”

“Not even a lyric? Modern technology, Kaito, we could find it on YouTube or something—”

“Something from Iris’s Baachan, yeah?”

“Not a word,” says Kaito, fixing Yuma—who’s giggling—with a stare. “Just the tune.”

“So—”

“No.”

“Booooo.”

“Forget you, Kaito. C’mon, Yuma, let’s finish this without him.”

“If you have a fail wish!”

“Go ahead,” says Kaito, and zips his lips, watches as Yuma and Ryoga clumsily try to relocate everything, that one’s… Artemis, right? And… that’s Sirius Black, so that must be the Dog Star, and the one next to it is… Prongs?

“Oh, my god,” Kaito says, and Ryoga snorts as the explanation starts all over again. By the time they’re done the stars have moved and the three of them are starting to yawn, too cool, too tired, too comfortable to move from their nest… until Yuma suggests hot chocolate, and ropes Ryoga into sneaking into the house to make some, their outdoors-only adventure forgotten. Kaito pulls out his phone while he waits.

In the dimmed backlight he can make out a complete lack of… well, anything. Yuma’s Wi-Fi is locked, Kaito’s nearly out of data already, and Chris said that morning that he was planning on getting some work done in an Ursa library with cinderblock walls. According to Chris it’s good for studying, but it’s also good for being driven out of your mind, and sometimes those two things together are exactly what you need to pass a course.

He should be done soon…

There’s a crash in the kitchen followed by a swear, a “SHH!”, and an urgent apology. When Kaito concentrates he hears Yuma calling Ryoga an idiot and the sink running, and when they come back with the three mugs of hot chocolate, Yuma looks at Kaito very seriously and announces, “Keep Ryoga away from Iris.”

Kaito clutches the eggbaby close to his chest and looks to Ryoga for an answer.

“I... broke his mom’s egg.”

He looks like he broke himself.

“Cheat,” quips Kaito, to which: “ _Shut_.”

They drink. Then they crawl back into their sleeping bag-and-pillow-and-blanket nest, and against the calm hum of late autumn, Kaito watches the stars and listens to the sound of Yuma snuggling closer to Ryoga. Feels his heart hover a little in the quietest of ways. He closes his eyes in the brisk air and he’s in another place, another time, curled up close to another someone, a card held tightly in his hands...

Kaito reaches for his deck box and slides out a Galaxy-Eyes to stare at. Galaxy-Eyes, the night sky, and friends beside him, Kaito kind of wishes he could put this moment in a box and come back to this exact place and time and feeling at his leisure. The breathing to his right steadies. Kaito rolls to his side, where Yuma’s hugging a pillow and Ryoga’s fighting to keep his eyes open, probably terrified of spooning Yuma in his sleep. But as Kaito watches they close, and Ryoga’s head lands right next to Yuma’s, and Ryoga’s fears will very soon be realized.

And in that moment, Kaito decides.

He types: [ _Hey._ ]

And within seconds he gets: [ _Hi._ ]

So.

[ _Yes._ ]

[ _Hm?_ ]

[ _That’s my answer._ ]

He drops his phone on his chest and falls asleep.


	18. time and space.

“Hey, Kaito?”

He stirs. The phone is still glowing on his chest, like he only closed his eyes for a minute.

“What time is it?”

“Dunno,” whispers Yuma. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

For a moment the world stops and Kaito wonders if he talks in his sleep, or if Yuma read his texts somehow, or if, if—no, he shakes his head, knocks the drowsiness around. Yuma hasn’t moved, is still snuggled with Ryoga, and isn’t a dick.

This probably has nothing to do with Kaito.

Ryoga snores and Kaito looks over to Yuma and Yuma looks over to Kaito; Yuma who is quieter in the dead of night than he ever is in the day, Yuma who insists on taking pictures at impromptu birthday parties so he can send them to his sister—to prove that he has friends here, thanks—and so he can send them to a friend back home in a small town in Honshu, a friend from when he was just a toddler, that he’s known so long and seen so little that he might be imaginary.

Kaito pulls himself up and stretches, hears a voice in the back of his head, _You’ll take care of him, won’t you, Niisan?_

“What’s up?”

Yuma moves, too, gently maneuvers himself away from Ryoga (who, even in his sleep, doesn’t look too happy about it), scoots next to Kaito, and asks if he’s okay.

Kaito wasn’t expecting that. “Me? I’m fine.”

Yuma nods. “The… light pollution is really bad here, isn’t it?”

Kaito glances up. “You get used to it.”

“[Is that... so.]” Yuma’s voice is soft, and he speaks in Japanese. It makes him sound more vulnerable, a different set of morphemes making for a different atmosphere, a different Yuma, more sad and more worldly than the Yuma Kaito usually knows.

An adult who hasn’t played with snow since they were a child will, perhaps, become a child upon playing with it again.

“[Your mom. Is that why you wanted to be an astronomer? For her?]”

For her?

“I…” He guesses? Maybe? It’s just been something that he’s always been into, you know, because it makes him happy, stars and galaxies and space. Makes him feel small, insignificant, important, real. “I’m not sure.”

What time is it?

“[The thing is… Touchan told me what happened to your mom.]”

“Oh,” says Kaito, who was twelve years old, who’s birthday had just passed, whose little brother still clung to his feet and barely knew their father when he came and whisked them over to LA, to a new house in Heartland, a new public school, and a new everything. “Yeah.”

“He told me this morning,” Yuma explains, and he pulls something out from his pajama pocket, something Kaito can barely read, barely make out: a Galaxy-Eyes. From summer. “[Your dad told mine last night, I think…]”

“It’s not a big deal,” says Kaito, even though it is, but mostly he doesn’t want Yuma to feel all bad. It’s… been years. He stares at the card as Yuma turns it over in his hands, read it again and again. Yuma, Kaito recalls suddenly, was homeschooled for a bit, too, a part of this program that his parents got him into, because they didn’t trust the US and its public education, didn’t want him to lose that part of his identity, didn’t want him to become too _gaijin_ , or whatever’s in between.

“[I… yeah],” he says, and finally he looks up. “[Sorry. I was just curious. Don’t you miss her?]”

[ _miza?_ ]

“[I… I haven’t ever really lost anyone so I can’t really… imagine.]”

[ _it’s really bad_ ]

“I’m okay,” says Kaito. “It… it happens to everyone, you know?”

Why does he feel more like he’s comforting Yuma, and less like he’s comforting himself?

“[Yeah… The future’s pretty scary, isn’t it?]”

[ _i think it’s just_ ]  
[ _i’m afraid?_ ]  
[ _of being an adult._ ]

[ _seventeen and a half isn’t being an adult, kaito. i promise_ ]

“Kaito? What’re you gonna do?” He looks at Ryoga. “Both of you didn’t apply to anything.”

He doesn’t know. He knows. “I don’t know.”

He hasn’t applied anywhere because he doesn’t know what he wants to do. Still doesn’t really think that far ahead, because that would involve being an adult, being ready, wouldn’t it?

“[Time to grow up, huh?]”

[ _no, miza_ ]  
[ _i think…_ ]

“Growing up isn’t really about age. I mean… I think you start to grow up when you start to have to.”

“Hm?”

“Like… were you ever afraid of spiders or something when you were little?” Yuma thinks, recoils. Kaito smiles. “Was your sister scared, too?”

No, says Yuma, she wasn’t.

“She probably was,” says Kaito, looking at his hands. “And… And she was pretending she wasn’t. [So you would feel safe.]”

It hadn’t occurred to Kaito until now that both he and Ryoga are graduating, and when they do, even if they’re still around, they won’t be in school, and Yuma won’t have anyone to sit with at lunch. Somehow that’s terrifying. But… Yuma’ll figure it out, Yuma has more friends than them and they still have the rest of the year together, and change happens and it keeps happening and Kaito’s eyes widen because he gave someone an answer—

Whispered: “Kattobing.”

And Kaito still doesn’t know what that means, and finally has the willingness to ask. Yuma’s surprised that he hasn’t explained it yet, or maybe surprised that Kaito doesn’t know at all, because Yuma was under the impression that it was a common phrase and everybody said it. “But maybe it’s something Touchan made up?” It wouldn’t be surprising.

 _Kattobing_. Never giving up. Giving it your all. A state of being. The opposite of depression and the opposite of _akirameru_. It’s an adjective—one is kattobing—but Yuma likes it better as a verb. It gives it potential: you _are_ kattobinging, and you _can_ kattobing, and you _will_ kattobing.

“[But maybe in your case it should be Kaitobing?]”

“ _Yumero_.”

But he gets it, and he thanks Yuma for explaining.

It’s still one of those nights.

Yuma asks, at Whatever AM on a Saturday morning, “Hey, Kaito. Duel?”

Kaito pulls out his deck, switches on a flashlight, and rolls on his stomach. “[For Yuma? Anytime.]”

They duel. Kaito wins. Yuma’s more excited about that than he ever is about winning himself, and he slides Kaito something, “Here.” Kaito takes a look and Yuma fixes himself between Kaito and Ryoga to go back to sleep.

His mom’s Galaxy-Eyes.

“Yuma, I don’t…”

“You won it.”

“We weren’t betting.”

“Too bad.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did you know my friends are the best!! [here is a gift one of them drew for me of this chapter](http://shiningdraw.tumblr.com/post/106820291661/secret-santa-delivery-to-my-wonderful-cool-friend) ;;


	19. Chaos & Order

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the hits, comments, kudos (107. hella), and general support! I'm sorry this chapter took so long; it is and always has been a chapter I'm very nervous about, so I had to be careful with it. If you find any problems, please leave me a message at [my tumblr](http://adreus.tumblr.com/ask) so I can address it efficiently.

Ryoga’s foot is on his stomach.

“What the hell,” says Kaito, and tries to shove it off, but Ryoga steps harder.

“Your goddamn alarm’s been going off for hours,” he grumbles, his eyes sleepy and his hair a mess but himself thoroughly awake, and Kaito has to catch the tossed phone before it lands on his face. Ryoga stretches, the scowl still present. Then he heads inside.

The sky is painted light blues and pre-noon yellows; it’s morning, but still too early to be awake for a weekend. Kaito blinks away the sleep and squints at his phone, because, uh, wait, he doesn’t have any alarms.

Missed calls: _Dad Dad Dad Dad Dad Unknown Dad Mizael Mizael Dad Dad_.

New text messages: [where are you??] [your dad’s been calling for hours] [kaito?]

_Low Battery. 10% battery remaining._ Dismiss. It’s 11AM but Mizael called half an hour ago and his dad called before and after that, and his dad never calls him and why would Mizael? And now Kaito’s wide awake because there’s no way, absolutely no way that his dad would ever need to contact him so desperately unless it had something to do with—

“Kaito?!” The voice on the other end is a whisper. “Hang on.” Shuffling, ducking out of a class. “Dude, what the hell, your dad’s been looking for you for hours, where _are_ you?”

No time for answers.

“Where's Haruto?”

"Kaito—"

"Mizael."

The swing of a door, but whether it's on Mizael's end or his own he doesn't know, because everything sounds the same distance away when your heartbeat is in your ears.

"The hospital."

And Kaito knew—somehow, he knew, and his heart, suspended still in the vain hope that _this isn't happening this isn't happening this isn't real_ , sinks hard and sinks fast, and if he had any color it'd sink from his face, and he purses his lips and he swallows because he's not going to cry, but he is going to breathe. "Where?"

"Central," Mizael answers, because Mizael knows all the answers, Mizael who is six hours away by plane and three time zones ahead of him, but still more awake and still more aware than Kaito was. "Hey, listen—"

"Ryoga."

No answer. The door was on Mizael's side.

"SHARK!"

Scrambling and crashing as the door swings open and Ryoga bursts out looking this way and that like who knows what happened, and Kaito in his pajamas and his tee puts out his hand and grits his teeth and demands Ryoga's keys, to which, "What the hell is going on?", and "Just fork them over," and "Uh, no? You knock yourself on the head, asshole?", “I don’t have time for this,” “What the hell happened,” Kaito won’t say it because giving it voice will give it victory, and he doesn’t have time to do that thing that he and Ryoga do, because Haruto—Haruto—god _dammit_.

“Whoa, what happened?” It’s Yuma, rubbing at his eyes and seeing him makes something in Kaito snap in two or three or four.

He calls his dad. The useless old man doesn’t pick up. He smashes the dial button again and his thumb hurts with the force but his dad picks up this time. “What did you do?!”

His dad tells him to calm down and he doesn’t, his dad tells him not to worry and Kaito does, because Kaito remembers the last time he was supposed to calm down and Kaito remembers the last time he wasn’t supposed to worry; two collisions that he missed out on but took parts of him with them anyway.

Mirai is gently guiding him inside the house and stuffing granola bars in his hand as his father explains: Haruto fell. It wasn’t a car crash. It wasn’t something Kaito could’ve prevented, it wasn’t something that can be blamed on anything else. Haruto was in Kaito’s room, probably looking for a card or something. He was coming down for a snack. He tripped, he fell, he twisted his leg (his bad leg) and he couldn’t get up (fall twice, stand once) and he called out (to Kaito?) and Dad took him to the ER (now his bad leg is worse).

If Kaito was home last night, this wouldn’t’ve happened. 

No one can deny it. Small, split-second decisions matter. 

The car is quiet. Kazuma doesn’t say anything and neither does Kaito. He’s still in his nightclothes. Didn’t really have the mind to change (Ryoga and Yuma’ll come after breakfast, Ryoga who Kaito snapped at, and Yuma who has small hands, his friends and his distractions and Kaito screwed up). 

He smells the yellow walls and the nauseating sterility before he leaves the parking deck, bites his lip as he runs and draws blood but the third time’s the charm, so it’ll be okay, right? and he runs for the lobby desk, demands, “Tenjo! Haruto Tenjo.” 

The woman smiles sweetly and asks, “What are you checking in for, son?” 

He stops, confused, like, what is she even asking him? Oh, that—no, he shakes his head. “Not—not me, my brother, he’s here.” 

“Just a minute, dear,” and her fingers fly over her keyboard before she realizes she needs to ask him to spell it, so he does and it’s too slow, this process is too slow because his head is spinning and he needs to see Haruto _now_. She reaches for a scrap of paper and a pencil and writes down the number, a careful _188_ , and this is stupid because she could’ve just said that and he would’ve remembered, it’s not like he’s a goldfish. 

She’s explaining the way to the elevators when he snatches the paper and runs toward them. It’s not a wing with which he’s unfamiliar. 

“Haruto!” 

The room is empty when he gets there. The number must be wrong, that stupid lady took that long to write it but screwed up anyway, didn’t she? He checks the sheet again and 188 and he checks the door again and _188_ , and he looks around the room again, what the hell, and then he sees it—there’s a coat draped on the back of the chair and he recognizes it. 

He hears a rush of water. A sink? 

Kaito whirls around to face the bathroom. 

The door opens. 

* * *

_It hurts. I’m not gonna lie._

Why didn’t you tell me? 

_Tell you what?_

That you weren’t okay. 

_Because I’m okay. It hurts, but I’m okay. I mean, sometimes I’m not._

Sometimes? 

_Niisan, what would you have done?_

What? 

_You couldn’t do anything. I mean, it hurt, it still hurts, but even if I wanted you to, there isn’t anything you can really do to help. I mean, you were barely around._

I… I know. 

_That’s not what I meant._

But I wasn’t. 

_No, Niisan, I’d say something to you, and you’d say something else like you weren’t even listening._

... 

_You were just—you were mad all the time. You barely heard anything we were saying._

We? 

_Me and Dad._

Haruto... 

_I can’t move. I tried really hard every day and I got better but not that much better and I didn’t want you or Dad to worry about me and I didn’t want me to worry about me because I kept telling myself I’d get better but, um, I can’t really move them. Like I’m trying right now and it isn’t…. But it was hard before and now it’s just—like, um, I guess I’ve levelled up and I need more experience this time?_

I didn’t— 

_Sometimes it felt like_ I _was taking care of_ you. _Um! Not that that’s a bad thing._

... 

_Niisan?_

I—I’m sorry. 

_...Okay. I forgive you._

What do you want me to do? 

_Be okay. I’m still me._

I love you. 

_I know._

Do you want me to leave? 

* * *

Faker wants to go home for a bit to rest and get something to eat and Kaito wasn’t about to move from his chair across Haruto’s bed anyway, so hours later finds Kaito staring at his hands and Haruto watching TV, a rerun of the _Duel Monsters_ finale followed by the special premiere of the new show. Haruto has the whole room to himself and like four nurses every hour, checking his vitals and his other things and asking if he wants a snack, like Kaito isn’t sitting right there with an open bag of untouched Lays.

Haruto's spent most of his time napping, and Kaito, who slept too well last night to be sleepy, spent most of _his_ time fidgeting with his fingers and trying to keep a straight face, trying to be okay. They talked. They talked about important stuff and they talked about what Kaito has to make for dinner as soon as they get home (so, more important stuff), and they talked about things that don't matter at all. 

He hasn't left the room since he got here and the pressure and the smell and the walls are giving him a headache, so he pinches his nose and closes his eyes, thinking. His thinking might drift to dreaming and it might not; he's not sure whether he was awake or asleep or in-between when there's a knock on the door and someone clearing their throat, and standing with a stuffed shark and a bouquet, respectively, are Yuma and Ryoga. 

Kaito stands. Motions that Haruto's sleeping. Runs a hand through his hair, vaguely references paraplegia, and then kind of trips back in his chair. 

It's been a day. 

"Kaito." He looks up and Yuma's offering him a hand, head tilted and fingers folding to beckon Kaito forward. Kaito bites the corner of his lip but takes it and stands. Yuma lets go and steals the chair, pushing Kaito in Ryoga's direction and snickering, "No where to sit now!" 

"Not really in the mood for this." 

"Me neither," says Ryoga, setting the flowers on the table, but he grabs Kaito's arm and pulls him out of the room anyway, pulls him down the hall and out of the ward and this way and that with an expertise that suggests Ryoga must've volunteered in middle school or something. To the stairs and down two levels and through a break room, they finally stop in front of the cafeteria, where Ryoga crosses his arms and stares at Kaito expectantly. 

Kaito's stomach takes the opportunity to grumble like they're in a cartoon. 

"Aren't you supposed to not be total shit at this or you'll die or something?" 

He scowls and takes a tray. "Or something." 

Ryoga forces him to sit and to eat and doesn’t sit or eat anything himself, just stands there and stares at the wall with a scowl that quivers more into a pout. It’s… cute, what the hell, but Kaito is too drained to tease him, so instead he asks, “Where’s Iris?” 

Ryoga twists to stare at him with his brow furrowed and his mouth slightly open. 

Kaito tries, “Our daughter?” 

Recognition dawns. “Oh. I dunno, where’d you put it last night?” 

Hell if he remembers. 

Hospital food tastes roughly the same as school food, but with more airborne disease. 

“How… How is he?” 

Kaito puts down his spoon and nudges his tray away. “Okay.” 

“Really?” 

“Really.” 

His phone is dead in his pocket and he’s still in the clothes he slept in, which probably makes him look like a patient when he and Ryoga walk back to the room. Haruto’s awake and Yuma’s snorting milk out his nose at some joke they just shared, except that the entropy gives way to inertia the second Kaito walks in through the door. Yuma and Haruto share a look, Ryoga and Yuma share a look, and Yuma promptly _hmph!_ s, crosses his arms, and refuses to budge from Kaito’s seat. 

Which, fine. It’s not like he’s a senior citizen on a city bus, or something. There’s a perfectly good wall to lean on, even if Ryoga doesn’t seem to agree today and claims the edge of Haruto’s bed for himself (“Why don’t you and Yuma share?” is in Kaito’s throat, but doesn’t quite make it to his tongue or his lips). 

The two of them stay for the rest of the day; when Kazuma and Mirai come later and offer to drop Kaito off at home to take a shower and get changed and charge his phone and eat a proper meal, they even swear to stay there until his return, even if they have to pee really badly and the bathrooms smell like old people and peanuts, even if they have to stay in the waiting room because Haruto wants space— 

“Even when your dad gets back,” Yuma promises. 

“ _Especially_ when your dad gets back,” Ryoga adds, to which Kazuma clears his throat and gives them all A Look, and Yuma and Haruto laugh. 

So Kaito says good-bye and Yuma’s parents give him a ride home; Mirai invites him to come to the Tsukumos’, where dinner’s almost ready and there’re guest towels in the bathroom, but Kaito politely declines—or, well, he declines, and he thinks it was politely, but he wasn’t really paying that much attention, just staring out the window and wishing he had his headphones and an mp3 player with juice. 

His dad’s car is parked uncharacteristically outside the garage. Mirai refuses to let him go without a hug, which he has to steel into or he’ll cry, and then they’re on their way and Kaito is alone. 

Well, mostly. 

Dad’s never made much of a difference, anyway. 

Unless… 

_You barely heard anything we were saying._

He shakes his head. No. Forget it, he— 

“Kite?” 

—winces. 

(With Dad, maybe he didn’t _want_ to hear. Is that so wrong?) 

“Don’t,” Kaito says, and climbs onto the stairs, not even bothering to look, this is just another day and another sad attempt and another— 

“Kaito Tenjo.” 

—Uh. 

He stops and looks back down to the weary old man with the dull blond hair in patches and the early wrinkles and the glasses, the dark, lusterless eyes and the single rusted earring sitting loosely in its place, to the scrunched look of a man who has, to Kaito, never had a face symmetrical, who has never quite lined up. 

Also? He’s ugly as hell. 

“What.” 

“Get down here,” says the old man, and the Uh continues. 

“Can I maybe put on pants first?” 

The look he gets says ‘Not unless you’ve pissed them,’ which, no, he may be diabetic but he’s still pretty proud of his piss control, so more out of curiosity than obedience—or, that’s what he tells himself as his throat dries because this is new, Kaito has yelled at his father but the opposite has never really happened since Dad is too impartial to care—Kaito steps down, follows his dad to the kitchen, and crosses his arms. 

“Yes?” 

The sigh that follows is so dramatic and cliché Kaito has to wonder if his dad has been watching soap operas for the past three hours, and that’s why he didn’t come back to the hospital. 

“We need to have a talk.” 

“I was under the impression we were already doing that.” 

“Don’t get smart with me, Kite.” 

“And _you_ don’t call me Kite, _Dad_.” And when did you suddenly turn into a parent? 

“That,” mutters his father, slumping into a chair, “never bothered you before.” 

“You’ve always bothered me,” Kaito counters matter-of-factly, and his eyes dart to the analog above the oven, blinking away minutes of daylight and seconds off his shower; he doesn’t want to make Yuma wait too long. 

“That’s not true,” says Faker, and it sounds like he believes it, says it the same way adults say all the things that teenagers are too young or too stupid to understand as fact, but this is about Kaito, and how could this old man know more about Kaito than Kaito does himself? 

“Is that all?” He makes to leave. 

“Why do you hate me?” 

He freezes, eyes wider than intended and mouth caught mid-retort. Faker is looking at him with genuine curiosity and even hurt, and Kaito can’t answer that question without writing a book. He wants to say _because I always have_ , _because you’re you_ , maybe even _because you’re white_. Because I’m alive, because Mom isn’t, because Haruto loves you and I can’t figure out why or how. Because it’s not fair, because I exist, because you had a picture in your desk of me and my mother that I’d never seen, and you knew her longer than me. Because I have to get out of bed, because I have to go to school, because I have to participate in human society. Because every day the sun climbs over the horizon and every night it clambers back down, I am still here and I feel less like a person than the day or night before. 

I hate you because I hate everything, because I hate me, because I don’t actually have the willpower to hate anymore; mostly I’m just apathetic, except for the days when my ears throb a little and I feel the studs that match my cousin’s, or my little brother asks me what he should do on this stage of _Radiant Dawn_ , or my idiot friend drops off our eggbaby daughter and I have to take care of her, or Yuma Tsukumo struggles with his Ls just a tiny bit when he asks me to duel, or Christopher Arclight texts me an emoticon in a chat medium just for him and me. 

I am only okay when I know there are people who still care about me. Me, a lump who failed his AP tests and his SAT because his brother was in an accident and his mother is dead, and the mother has moved on, obviously, and it is Haruto’s problem and not mine, and he wants me to know that; and I broke, I think, I broke into fifty fucking pieces, but somehow, somewhere, people still give a damn about me. Do you? 

“Kaito? I do want an answer.” 

It’s like there’s a _snap_ , someone cutting the neck off the guard patrolling the fence between his brain and his throat. 

“Do you even give a damn about me? Do you—do you even actually care about either of us?” 

“What the hell gave you that idea?” 

“What, so you aren’t just taking care of us because of some stupid sense of duty, because social services will come after you if you don’t pay for my prescriptions?” 

“What? Kite, I—” 

“ _Don’t_ tell me you love me. I don’t want to hear it. I kind of don’t want to hear you speak at all, actually.” 

“This is it, then? You think I don’t care about you?” 

_I know_ , Kaito thinks, and he’s getting dizzy, like gravity’s coming at him from all sides, from above and from below and beside, so he has to close his eyes and shake his head and grab the table for balance. His dad pulls out a chair for him. There isn’t another one, so he takes it. 

“Your birthday’s in four months,” Faker says. 

“You remembered.” 

“You’ll be eighteen,” Faker continues, and the hurt from before is gone, the strain replaced with business. “Are you planning to move out? You know you can’t take Haruto with you.” 

“You,” says Kaito, narrowing his eyes, “look awfully like an antagonist right now.” 

“You see what you want to.” 

“I see an asshole.” 

“I don’t think Oedipus did his father.” 

“What the fuck.” 

And there’s the third sigh. Kaito braces himself, wondering if this conversation can actually get any stupider. 

“She’s dead, Kaito. You know that. I know that.” Wow, thanks, Doctor, where’d you get that Ph.D? “I can’t match her love for you. No one can. But”—a spot on Kaito’s forehead burns, and this should be good, shouldn’t it, here it comes—“but I care about you.

“And? If you’re not up for that, I’ll be here, in this house, at this table.” He stands. “In four months, you won’t have to be.

“So, Mr. Kaito-Don’t-Call-Me-Kite-Tenjo. What are you going to do?”


	20. Poetry

He’s going to take a piss.

He’s going to take a piss and he’s going to take a shower, spend way too much time standing under the cold water without having shampooed, and think about what just happened and how it came to this.

Wow. Now is really not the time for poetry.

He’s pretty sure his dad is kicking him out.

Like, apparently this has been a long time coming, except his dad’s been struggling with it because there were brief moments where it felt like maybe things would work out, maybe Kaito had the faintest of clues that yes, Faker cares about him, and could learn to live with it. But then, Kaito was told, there is his current streak: Coming home at seven in the morning, getting into fights, getting suspended, phone bills with overages upwards of sixty dollars.

You know. That kind of stuff.

("I thought you didn’t care about that," mumbled Kaito at that last one, and the response he got: "I didn’t. But you want me to, so here we are.")

_What are you going to do?_

"Get out of here," he murmurs to himself hours later, lying in the bed that he used to want to marry and now he just wants it to swallow him whole. "Here" is vague in his head; here, his bedroom? Here, this house? Here, this town, or even here, the world? None of the options are more or less appealing than the ones before it, so it’s with a numbness that a decision to go outside, to get some fresh air, and then to maybe sit in a hospital waiting room and count every single mistake he’s ever made is finally reached.

It’s when he’s pulling on pants and the first hoodie in reach that his phone blinks to life and vibrates once, twice, five times. And there are a few things that can’t have been mistakes at all: _kattobingu_ , _Ryoga_ , _boyfriend_.

From last night, somewhere between "that’s my answer" and "kaitobingu":

[ _!!_ ]  
[ _Just to clarify, the question in question was—_ ]

Heh. Chris must’ve been hanging onto that breath for a while, huh? Smiling despite himself, Kaito types:

[ _y/n for 500, Alex._ ]

[ _hella_ ]

[ _"when we got together the first thing my bf said was ‘hella’"_ ]

[ _wow don’t try to change me_ ]  
[ _are you sure this is gonna work out, I eat a lot of cheap ramen, will that turn you off_ ]

[change_of_heart.jpg]

[dark_bribe.jpg]

[ _did you just_ ]

[ _;)_ ]

And there’s really nothing to say to _that_ , so Kaito, spirits more lifted, clicks the phone locked and drops it in his pocket. Picks up his backpack (Kazuma and Mirai had it with them in the car) and piles assorted junk into it from his nightstand, the photo from the office and his notebook and hell, even his pen. The bag’s already got the daily necessities, but now he stuffs in an extra shirt, extra pants, extra anything else, too—and he’s out the door.

The hospital is only a bus ride away.

* * *

"Stop being so melodramatic," Ryoga says, shoving a soda bottle in front of him. Ryoga’s trip to the vending machine was successful then; when he plops down next to Kaito (a second chair has finally been provided), his hands are full with another drink, two understuffed bags of overpriced chips, and a pack of gum.

"I’m not," says Kaito, and reaches for the gum—to be denied.

"You should’ve insulted me there."

"Shut up."

"Weak," says Ryoga, but tosses the gum in Kaito’s direction. It feels like Kaito just lost at something.

Kaito hasn’t told Ryoga what happened; he just showed up a few hours ago with his backpack and careless hair and spent most of his time after Yuma left texting Chris. Kaito doesn’t even know why Ryoga’s still here. Other than a toddler and her babysitter, they’re the only two people in the waiting room, where they’ve moved their chairs near an outlet so Kaito can keep his stupid phone on life support and Ryoga can do the same to his PSP, which, apparently, he brought. But he forgot their daughter.

"Good one, partner."

"I may have been a little distracted. What with you _shouting at everyone_."

Still, Kaito’s not complaining. Iris is just a stupid school project; she can survive a single day of parental abandonment at her godfather’s house, and anyway Kaito thinks he kind of needs Ryoga more. The sporadic swearing at Nyx Avatar is loud and jarring and has prevented Kaito from texting [ _pretty sure my dad is kicking me out of the house what the hell do i do_ ] more than once.

Instead his messages have been about basically everything that isn’t Haruto or Life. Chris is going to think he’s clingy as hell, like being boyfriends suddenly made Kaito go from this mildly interested guy with some wit to a god damn fountain of the randomest shit and _now is really not the time for internal rhyme_.

What the hell, he doesn’t even _want_ to talk to Chris about this, they became a thing less than twenty-four hours ago and Kaito just wants to be stupid with him for a bit, okay? And, like, yeah, Chris is older than him, Chris has moved away from his family and embarked on Life, sort of, but boyfriend or not, this is something Kaito has to figure out on his own.

(Chris has always been a family kind of guy, anyway, so Kaito already knows what his advice would be).

Of course, Chris catches on anyway.

[ _hey are you okay?_ ]

Ryoga and Kaito’s "dammit"s sync up, but "I SWEAR TO GOD MINAKO" is Ryoga’s alone.

[ _?_ ]

[ _Uh look_ ]  
[ _I’m sorry if I came on too strong_ ]

[ _What gave you that idea?_ ]

[ _you didn’t have to say yes or answer right away..._ ]  
[ _you don’t think I can tell when you’re being weird?_ ]

[ _weird..._ ]  
[ _ah no I’m fine_ ]  
[ _it’s not that_ ]

[ _? what is it_ ]

[ _Nothing._ ]

[ _Kaito._ ]

[ _me._ ]

[ _did you get Skype yet?_ ]

[ _kind of not in an optimal location_ ]

[ _Where are you?_ ]

[ _hold on_ ]

Kaito looks up and at Ryoga, who’s comfortable in his chair and locked in intense battle but only has one earbud in, and can probably see Kaito’s screen. The hospital Wi-Fi has three full bars… So he gestures vaguely that he’s going to the bathroom or for a walk or to get coffee or something, Ryoga shrugs, and Kaito’s off to some place private. 

Thing is, Skype is the stupidest internet client Kaito has ever downloaded. It’s this obnoxiously bright blue and it’s clunky and it’s huge, takes too much space on his phone for the lackluster functionality it provides, but Chris has asked him about it before and he does have an old Live account, so. Kaito signs into messageinabottle and adds chris.arclight.

It starts ringing before he gets his earbuds in and somehow he manages to accept the call and drop the phone at the same time, so the first thing Chris hears is, "Shit!"

"...Um, hey?"

He picks it up again and pretends that didn’t happen, dusts off the screen with his shirt and accidentally hits mute two times before he’s finally set up. Skype shows Chris somewhere outside on campus, his hair in a ponytail and both earbuds tucked carefully in place, and what the hell he has glasses? Why is everything in Kaito’s life so unfair?

"What," Chris says, squinting at the corner of his laptop screen and fixing his hair, "no video?"

"No," replies Kaito, then realizes he didn’t say hi. "Hey."

Chris waves. "Why go to the trouble of an app if a call would’ve worked?"

"Why go to the trouble of an app when FaceTime?" Kaito counters, but he turns the camera on anyway. The back one. He hopes Chris likes bathroom stalls.

"That’s better. ‘Cept when did your face turn into a square of blue and pencil graffiti? Wait, are you in a restroom?"

Well, he did want some place _private_ , and it felt kind of rude to take the wheelchair accessible one. But he flips to the front camera and sees himself pouting. "Maybe."

Chris is all smiles when he tucks a loose strand of hair behind his ear and asks, "Would it be inappropriate to ask if you have your pants down?"

"The better to piss on you with, Christopher."

"Are you into that?"

"I’m breaking up with you."

The restroom door swings open and shut and Kaito is silent and unmoving, his breath caught, except he realizes it's probably weird if the guy in the stall next to you isn't breathing, so he, uh, starts to do that again. The intruder takes his sweet time peeing, whistles while he does it, and Chris makes a _face_ while Kaito tries to hide his own face in one hand but still squint at the screen, and then the dude flushes, doesn't wash his hands, and leaves.

The silence stretches.

Chris's shoulders start shaking with laughter. Kaito purses his lips to hide his smirk.

"So!"

"So… I don't… really know how this works."

"How what works?"

"Am I your first?"

"Hm?"

"Boyfriend."

"Look, if you don't want to—"

"Stop. If I didn't want to do it, I wouldn't be."

"Ah."

"I'm… just not entirely sure what this is. But, like, uh, I like being yours? I like you being mine."

Chris smiles, and _god_.

"It doesn't have to be defined, you know. It doesn't even have to be different. Maybe I'll send you a less-than-three every now and then."

"Don't you dare," mutters Kaito, because Ryoga sends him those, and it's hard enough to deal with that. 

"So," Chris says, sitting on campus on a sunny day in Northern California, "tell me about your day." And that's nothing new, Kaito does that all the time, tells Chris what happened and what failed to happen, so now he speaks—except that he leaves Haruto and his dad out of it because this moment, locked in a dirty blue hospital bathroom stall with a bright blue chat app and a dumb college student smiling at him, is his.

So he speaks, and he is comfortable, and he is okay.

He even figures something out, when Chris ignores a call from his brother, brushes it off because it’s probably just to whine about how their dad is making Thomas go to community college and he doesn’t _want_ an education anywhere near Vancouver, okay, wasn’t fourteen years of this torture enough, and Chris thinks that Thomas will eventually get what he wants without Chris’s intervention so really he doesn’t need to hear it.

"Crossing my fingers for a shitty roommate."

Kaito crosses his fingers in solidarity. "A tone deaf one."

"So a mirror?"

"How supportive of you."

Chris’s phone rings two more times and he ignores it, but when Thomas still doesn’t get the hint Chris sighs and says he should probably take it in case something’s gone wrong. They say goodbye and Chris sends him a flying kiss so Kaito sends him the finger, and then they end the call and Kaito gets up and stretches and looks around, a new conviction building up in his chest.

When he gets back to the waiting room it’s with a bag of Burger King, because he’s hungry and Ryoga should really ingest something that isn’t stale SunChips or soda. Ryoga’s on the phone, two earbuds in and his voice soft and quiet, but Kaito catches the "Talk to you later, Rio," when he dumps the bag on the table. Ryoga acknowledges him with, "That was the longest shit ever."

"They have Burger King in the bathrooms here. Long line."

Ryoga snorts and stares at the bag expectantly, sunk too far in his chair to even consider reaching for himself.

Kaito slides one down, says, "Question."

"What?"

"What d’you think about the Bay Area?"

"Much Bay," says Ryoga with his mouth full, and, uh, gross? "Very Area."

"You are such a meme. Our child will be a meme."

"Don’t get involved with me."

This time it’s Kaito that snorts; he’d actually laugh if this weren’t, y’know, kind of important. He has an idea and it’s probably stupid but he’s going to say it anyway. "So no idea where you’re headed?"

"Was thinking my parents basement."

"What, playing _Persona_ your whole gap year? Or going on Nasch’s wild band tour across the country?"

At his alias, Ryoga scowls. "Kaito," he says, dropping what was once a burger on the table, "Do you honestly think any good college will want me?" Kaito wants to ask, _did you even try, because I didn’t_ , and he wants to call Ryoga out on bullshit because he thinks the internet fame and regularly translating English songs into Japanese and performing them alone and making revenue could be called ‘talent,’ and he wants to call Ryoga stupid, too, but what comes out instead of reassurance or explanation or insult is, "Come up there with me."

"...What?"

Well… Kattobingu, right?

"I was," starts Kaito, but then he stops, because he… hasn’t really rationalized it past this, but there’s adrenaline, there’s some clarity in the blurry distance that is his future, and he says, "My, uh… my boyfriend, he’s there, and, like, I figure I could get a job if I can’t get into the school I want, but I think I’m actually going to try, and I’m sure you could do whatever it is you do in your bedroom at night in an apartment with a shitload of cockroaches and stupid neighbors and a weird smell, and, uh, me?"

God. _God_.

Who _is_ he anymore?


	21. Now & Then

_let me go, gravity_  
 _walks on my shoulders_  
 _little by little, i feel a bit better_

It goes something like this:

KAITO: And I’m sure you could do whatever it is you do in your bedroom at night in an apartment with a shitload of cockroaches and stupid neighbors and a weird smell, and, uh, me?

RYOGA: Uh, what?

KAITO: I’m asking if you’d want to room with me. Like, after graduation.

RYOGA: Why the hell would I wanna do that?

KAITO: I figured I would be more tolerable than a basement.

RYOGA: Dude, have you seen my basement?

KAITO: No. Are you inviting me to? ‘Cause I’d kind of like a place to stay that doesn’t smell like old people if Haruto kicks me out again.

RYOGA: Your house is closer than mine.

KAITO: Let’s just say I lost my key. Would you rather I stay at Yuma’s?

RYOGA: Yes. No. Wait. No. Call a locksmith.

KAITO: It’s fine. I’ll just call Yuma’s mom.

RYOGA:

KAITO:

RYOGA:

KAITO: Hey, Yuma? Is your mom there?

RYOGA: HEY, YUMA. SLEEPOVER AT MY PLACE TONIGHT.

KAITO: You get all that? Cool. We’ll see you tonight.

_Click._

KAITO: Okay then.

RYOGA: Okay.

KAITO: Okay.

RYOGA: Wait, did you say boyfriend?

They go to see Haruto again and Kaito tells him the plan’s to stay at Ryoga’s for the night and he’ll be back tomorrow. Haruto eyes him like a parent, ‘cause their dad called and said he was staying the night and there was something off in his tone when he asked if Kaito was still around, but Kaito insists that it’s nothing to worry about it and—eyeing Ryoga—he’ll tell Haruto later. Rio’s waiting for them outside, anyway, so they should get going.

The ride with her is merciless; she spends the entire time dropping hints about being safe, to which Ryoga eventually clears his throat and puts in, “Rio, he has a _boyfriend_ ,” but Rio doesn’t miss a beat with her, “So does IV, and I’m not seeing you flirt any less with him, bro.”

“Shut up,” says Ryoga smartly, and he crosses his arms, looks out the window.

Rio ignores him and glances at the rear view, focusing on Kaito’s hoodie. “Speaking of IV, I’m surprised Ryoga let you in his presence with that on. Were you wearing that in bed, too?”

Ryoga slams his fist on the stereo and amps the volume up. The gesture would probably work better if the CD that plays isn’t an Owl City album; it’s one of those breezy tracks that’s too bizarre (not bizarre enough?) to make it to 102.7, not exactly the kind of beat that reflects the force behind Ryoga’s fist. What’s more, there’s volume controls on the wheel so Rio brings it right back down, drumming her fingers on the dashboard and singing along.

Actually, it’s more like she’s serenading her brother than just singing along; she keeps glancing at him knowingly, pokes his cheek when a lyric sings, “ _There's something about you that makes me feel alive_.”

Ryoga blushes and brushes her hand away, slumping in his seat. “She’s right, by the way,” he says, and it takes Kaito a moment to realize he’s being addressed.

“What?”

“I’m not letting you in the house with that on.”

“I have to strip first?”

“Now you’re just trying too hard.”

Hey, he couldn’t leave it hanging.

“Where’d you get that thing, anyway? I mean, I know your taste is crap and all—”

“—why I’m friends with you, of course—”

“—but _IV_? What are you, twelve?”

“No,” says Kaito, “but my little brother is.”

Although, uh, that’s not exactly why he knows about IV’s stupid sketch comedy channel. IV makes Haruto laugh, sure, in that over-the-top-Asain-YouTuber-who-still-watches-Naruto kind of way, but IV also happens to be Chris’s little brother—Thomas—and Chris is the one who first showed them youtube.com/f4nservice69, like, _don’t worry, Haruto, my family is super embarrassing, too._ And if that life changing adventure wasn’t enough, Chris started dumping a bunch of his excess IV merch on them, and Kaito didn’t have anyone to impress, so. Here they are.

“It’s my boyfriend’s,” says Kaito, and feels both lamer and less lame.

Rio breaks song to ask, “You’re dating IV?” the same time Ryoga goes, “ _Shit taste_ ,” before adding, “What the hell, you’ve been dating someone for like five minutes and you already have one of his sweaters?”

“Jealous you don’t have any of Yuma’s yet?”

“I would personally burn any IV merch that Yuma owns in my own fireplace alongside my own body.” It’s clear he’s not kidding when Rio nods seriously, and Kaito considers hooking Yuma up with a new hat.

“So who’s this sudden boyfriend, anyway?”

Well, uh, no reason to hide it, right. “Chris.”

“Chris has shit taste.”

“Look, he accidentally left this like a year ago and never took it back—”

“ _Shit. Taste_ —”

“—because IV is his _brother_ , dipshit.”

“Oh,” says Ryoga.

“Shit luck,” adds Rio.

For Chris, or for Kaito?

“I can pass a message if you’re interested in getting involved,” Kaito says, and Ryoga tells Rio to stop the car. They make Kaito walk the remaining two blocks, a sentence that is, according to Nasch’s twitter, “supposed to make this vagabond reflect.”

Just for that, Kaito considers writing IV/Nasch fanfiction and sending it to Chris, who can forward it to Thomas, who likes doing dramatic readings of them and tagging Nasch and all other relevant parties. Not worth the effort, though; once he decides on an idol AU, he starts getting images of IV in _Madoka_ dresses and the words “IVskin” and “Naschty” stick out more than they should, and “I wrote gay porn of my friend” isn’t really. Something he wants on his resume.

There’s probably an explanation in order, so here’s how it went down.

Ryoga is a YouTube celeb—Nasch. Thomas is a more well-known YouTube celeb—IV.

Nasch is a musician; sometimes he joins his friends for the occasional sketch, but his own channel is mostly covers of the Top 100 in English or in Japanese—he and his sister spend hours translating and rewriting—with the occasional original from his EP.

IV, meanwhile, is a comedian; he does fake trailers and pranks and parodies, and has a running gag about fanservice, where he’ll take off his clothes and/or wear questionable clothing, and it’s all quite a Thing that has called for more than one emergency family meeting between Chris and his youngest brother, Mihael.

Nasch doesn’t think IV’s funny. He’s tweeted about it on more than one occasion, and when it caught the eye of one particular fangirl with a few too many Tumblr followers… Well, IV’s fanbase got angry, IV himself thought it was hilarious, and the hashtag war commenced. #NaschIsNaschty, #4forIV, and #BENETTRASH trended for a good day or so, and the number of poorly spelled messages Nasch received was ridiculous. Ten-year-old kids really have nothing better to do, do they?

Well. Actually. They do.

Shipping.

It started small: People in the Tumblr tags. Trolls in Nasch’s mentions. A ship name, which caught on because it made IV piss himself laughing: IVforNasch.

Of course, Ryoga wasn’t as amused about the whole thing as IV.

**DON’T get involved with me**  
 _uploaded 23 JULY 2011 by BENETNASCH_

Yeah.

IV thought Nasch’s response was _hilarious_ —for good reason—and the fangirls shipped even harder. The video went viral, Nasch took it down, someone else put it back up, both their channels got exponentially more popular, and now they’re in this weird, kind-of-flirty partnership or something?

Or. IV seems to think so. Nasch still hasn’t followed back.

Kaito read that KnowYourMeme article, like, three times, and then asked Chris and Rio for some of the details to piece it together. Chris wasn’t all that helpful, really, insisting that he couldn’t much find it in him to care what his little brother was up to on the internet, but for Kaito? The entire thing’s just too good. And being acquainted with both sides of it makes it even better.

Ryoga’s waiting for him in the driveway when he finally gets there, arms crossed and glaring at Kaito’s hoodie, like, _excuse me, did you not shed that thing and bury it in a ditch during the cold, half-mile walk here?_ Kaito rolls his eyes, but off it comes. “You’re a child. You know that?”

“You’re wearing my shirt underneath? Does Chris know how many men you’re slipping into?”

“And how comfortable is your sister’s letterman right now?”

Ryoga scowls. “Truce.”

Kaito throws the hoodie at Ryoga’s face and heads inside.

The lack of Halloween decorations doesn’t make the place look any less extravagant; if anything, the absent tackiness makes it _more_ intimidating, with an angry crease in the roof that could belong to Shark Kamishiro’s grandmother. Kaito’s been here a few times since Halloween, but there’s still something about the vase in the entranceway that makes him queasy, and anytime Kaito so much as glances in the direction of Ryoga’s room, Ryoga yelps. It’s, like, dude, calm down; Kaito wants to roll his eyes and say, “What, one step in your room and you’ll be all over me again? Am I that hot?” but Rio is still around, and since Kaito gets a lot of his gossip about Ryoga from her, providing Rio with more fodder doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Plus, their mom is home.

Ryoga’s mom is tall and grinning and looks, like, twenty-seven, which Kaito hopes she isn’t, but makes sense because she’s apparently a cosmetologist, just come home from a Sunday shift at a magazine she’s dipped her hand in. She rounds the corner in an expensive black sweater and tailored pants and heels that look like they can murder, but whether it’s her own feet or a man, Kaito doesn’t want to find out. She takes one glance at him and purses her lips, like Kaito walked straight out of the trash and onto her freshly steam-mopped floor, but it subsides almost immediately, replaced with a warm smile and her pointing to his hair.

...He can explain.

“Did you do that yourself, dear?”

No, he can’t.

“Hey, mom,” says Ryoga, having lost his letterman and the IV sweater in the closet by the door.

“Welcome home,” she says. “I just got in. Who’s this? Another friend?” And she turns to scrutinize Kaito again, notices his shirt, squints at the giant 32—and Kaito’s eyes go wide because _wait hang on NO_ , but Ryoga’s mother’s already wheeled on her son, and out comes in rapidfire Japanese: “[Kamishiro Ryoga why is there a white boy in my entrance hall with shitty hair and your shirt on],” and it’s, like, impressive, how smoothly she says it to sound like Ryoga’s chores or something, except, well.

“MOM NO,” Ryoga shouts the same time Rio smiles, “[That’s Kaito].”

“Kaito?” She says, staring at where he’s standing like he’s not actually there, so he raises a hand like, “Um, hi,” and she dismisses it with her hands, “Hello,” before turning to her daughter, “[The one he made out with]?” and to her son, “[You made out with a white boy]?” and finally, “[Kaito is a Japanese name, isn’t it]?”

“[Kind of],” says Kaito. “[Yes. Nice to meet you.]”

“Oh,” says Ryoga’s mom, and Rio snickers, and Ryoga turns a violent 180 degrees and declares, “I’m gonna go drown myself. Bye mom, bye Rio.”

“Bye, Ryoga,” they say together, like this happens once a week.

And so he’s left alone with his basically-FWB’s mother.

“Kaito, hm? Should we start over?”

“Um,” he says, shoving his hand out to shake hers, “please. I’m Kaito. We’re, uh, classmates.”

There’s a splash somewhere outside.

“Congrats on your son.”

“Congrats on your partner,” she replies, and damn.

Thiiiis is weird. Talking to parents is weird. Kazuma is bad enough, Mirai is a little tricky, but Ryoga’s mom, is, like… he gets the feeling she would get along with Mizael, and she knows about Halloween, and he’s trying really hard to have his arms cover the 32 on his shirt, but—wait, uh, how much does she know, exactly? Is it just, like, casually making out somewhere, or is it waking up spooning in the dead of night, or, oh, god, SOS.

She’s still taking him in, poking around his face like he’s a client or something. “Cute helix.” She nods more to herself than to him, and then, backing up, “You wouldn’t mind me giving you a little…” She waves her fingers around. “Yeah?”

“Uh,” says Kaito, and looks out at the pool, wondering if Ryoga’s dead yet, and if he would even want to save Kaito from a makeover, because Ryoga probably thinks Kaito needs it, too.

“Great,” she says, and claps her hands. “Rio, my only child, get the room ready.”

* * *

[ _so you turned down the mohawk?_ ]

[ _I turned down the Mohawk._ ]

[ _that’s no fun._ ]  
[ _you could’ve pulled it off!_ ]

[ _yeah, I bet it’s in the family._ ]

[ _mmhm_ ]  
[ _but i think it looks good!_ ]  
[ _not much to do with that weird green you like so much, you know?_ ]

[ _thanks, miza._ ]

[ _thumbs up!_ ]

Rio and her mother disappear to go salvage Ryoga and leave Kaito explicit instructions not to move or turn around or anything, this is going to be a surprise, okay, and hey, Kaito’s not going to disobey the scary woman whose son he’s basically counting on to pay a lease, so he takes out his phone for the front camera instead, takes a selfie, and shares it with his cousin.

It’s short. She brought down his usual and cut it to just below his ears and he looks… smaller, kind of, he keeps squinting at his own reflection and feeling the back of his head, what, how can hair make you look so different? People're definitely gonna notice his piercing now.

There’s a fidgeting at the door and Kaito looks up to glare at it before it actually opens, so when it does, he’s accidentally hit Yuma with something meant for a Kamishiro.

“Hi Kaito!” Yuma waves, carefully closing the door behind him. “Whoa, different.”

“That bad?”

“I like it,” he says, grinning. “It’s cool! Did Ryoga’s mom do it?”

Kaito nods. “She couldn’t stand the thought of her son mackin—uh, making friends with someone who looked like me, I guess.”

“Cool,” says Yuma, and then again, “Cool,” and he doesn’t catch Kaito’s slip, which, weird, since it’s so obvious, but then Kaito realizes that Yuma’s kind of distracted, is speaking faster than normal and keeps looking behind him, like he’s trying to listen for something outside and why is he here alone, anyway?

“Did Ryoga actually die?”

“W-What?! No! No dying. No death.”

“You okay there?”

“It was Ryoga’s fault!” Yuma whimpers. “But you can probably fix it, right?!”

“Fix _what_?” Kaito gets up and Yuma smiles meekly, opens the door behind him and gestures for Kaito to go first, which Kaito does, self-consciously patting down his hair, and standing right there are Rio and Ryoga—who’s still dripping wet—and their mom all staring at something Ryoga’s got in his hands and is shaking desperately in the hopes that it’ll work, shouting words of encouragement at a piece of metal shaped like an egg...

“You _killed_ Iris?!”

At Kaito’s voice, Ryoga drops her. Rio flinches.

“Shut up!” Ryoga shouts, quickly grabbing their eggbaby from the pool of water at his feet. It sparks. “Don’t say her name!”

“You murdered her!”

“It’s a robot, it doesn’t have a gender identity!”

“Go _dry yourself_ ,” Kaito snaps, snatching the robot and wiping at it with his shirt, and the screen is a mess of dead pixels and a deep, staticy sound comes from the speaker, and Kaito turns it in his hands, demanding a screwdriver. Instead he finds himself being dragged to the garage by Rio, Yuma jogging behind him, Ryoga dismissed to change his clothes and never touch Iris again, probably.

He's done robotics, right, this is no big deal, he unscrews her diaper and shines his phone's light inside, what Sunday's complete without doing emergency surgery on your robot daughter—but _damn_ , did Ryoga and Yuma, like, toss this thing in the pool? Because there's absolutely no reason why the inside should be _flooded_ ; Kaito turns Iris over and dumps her on the floor, and some of the wiring, jogged loose by the incessant shaking earlier, tries to fall out, too. Rio sucks in a breath, grimacing.

"Go get a towel or something," he says, and carefully starts to set it all back in. If he could break into school he _might_ be able to fix this, but here with a screwdriver and Yuma and Ryoga having tried to _hide this from him_ , the most he can do is maybe revive the backlight. "What did you _do_ , throw her in a pool?"

Yuma is quiet. Kaito turns, holding Iris like he's going to burp her. "Yuma."

"We were rocking her! Ryoga said it'd be fine!"

"You dropped our project in the pool."

"Ryoga did!"

Speak of the dumbass — Rio reappears with a towel and Ryoga's right behind her in a changed pair of jeans and an _Adventure Time_ tee, sincerely concerned as to the health of the piece of electronic equipment that he dunked in water.

"How is she?"

Kaito tosses Iris at Ryoga, who barely catches her. "You ever play Megaman X4?"

"What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

"Iris dies."

They are _so_ screwed. Can Kaito claim he was distracted, can he forge his dad's signature on a note, can he at least get a pass from the class period so he doesn't have to listen to the speech he knows they'll be getting from Crossit? Like, he _tried_ , right, how many other kids d'you think had to take their baby to the ER?

"Who throws their child in the pool. Ryoga."

"I had her, okay? I slipped. It's dark outside."

"Maybe you shouldn't _swim in the dark_."

"I," tries Ryoga, and the pronoun is weak enough before he continues, "wouldn't have jumped if you weren't here."

The crickets are pretty much audible. This is the guy Kaito wants to share an apartment with?

"...So," says Yuma, as the air grows dismal and Ryoga stars at a wall in horror, "if there's nothing we can do, how about a snack? I'm staaaarving."

* * *

[ _my partner killed my daughter._ ]

[ _no life insurance?_ ]

[ _he threw it in a pool Chris he dropped an actual robot in a pool_ ]

[ _was he trying to see if it could swim_ ]

[ _YUMA SAYS THEY WERE PLAYING CATCH?_ ]  
[ _???_ ]

[ _IT WAS WITH ANOTHER MAN?!_ ]

[ _Christopher_ ]

[ _Kaito._ ]  
[ _I'm sorry for your loss._ ]

[ _Thank you I appreciate your concern._ ]

* * *

It's hours later that they finally get to talk, rolled onto their stomachs on the floor and dueling after a solemn half hour in memoriam. Yuma's managed to grab his sister on Viber, so this round is Kaito vs Ryoga, and it's cold downstairs so blankets have been located and draped all over, like someone wanted to build a fort but gave up halfway, and Ryoga plugged in a heating fan, control of which belongs to the current leader in the duel. The bowl of chips has been refilled, like, five times, Kaito has managed to locate midnight milky way, and Yuma is making progress on a glass of strawberry milk, so they've settled into something that could be called comfort.

Ryoga's the one that brings it up again.

"So. Bay Area?"

"Bay Area. End my turn."

Ryoga narrows his eyes, but if it's at Kaito's face-down or whatever else he's thinking about is uncertain. "Are you asking me out?"

Kaito snorts. "I'm asking you for a down payment so we can snuggle up to each other in a two-inch studio apartment."

"I don't _snuggle_."

"Uh-huh. I've slept with you—"

" _Next_ to me," Ryoga clarifies, in case Yuma heard, except that Ryoga is louder than Kaito was and actually manages to get Yuma's attention where Kaito hadn't.

"Alright, _next_ to you. You were smashed. I wasn't. You snuggle."

Yuma ends his call and crawls up to them, checks Kaito's hand, checks Ryoga's, and grins before settling next to Ryoga, who stiffens first, relaxes second, and scowls at Kaito third.

"Whose turn?" asks Yuma.

Ryoga draws. Kaito's face-down is a feint, so Ryoga's no trouble tearing through the field and reclaiming enough lifepoints to regain control of the heater. He doesn't bother changing its direction.

"What were you two all whispery about? Didn't sound like that thing you usually do. You weren't talking about me, were you?"

"Kaito was being a jerk," says Ryoga, and his turn's over.

Kaito doesn't see any reason to hide. "I was asking Ryoga if he'd want to room with me."

"Oooh," says Yuma, and he looks about as excited as Ryoga is red, which, is that Ryoga or a tomato dream girl? "But won't Kaito's boyfriend mind if he stays alone with a single, hot internet celeb?"

—!!

Did Yuma just.

Is Ryoga functioning? That color doesn't look very healthy.

"Yo, Shork," Kaito tries, snapping his fingers in front of Ryoga's face, "you in there? Do I have to wait for Yuma to get out of school instead?"

Ryoga shoves Kaito's hand out of the way. " _Make your move._ "

"On Yuma?"

"Please don't," says Yuma, "I don't wanna reject Kaito."

That only makes Ryoga grumpier, like, does that mean Yuma would be fine rejecting Ryoga, but it's not voiced and Kaito takes his turn, and Yuma remembers a combo he did once back in October and the conversation propels forward, questions unasked and answers undecided. They have school tomorrow, and Yuma was only allowed over on the condition that he goes to sleep at a decent time, so it's, like, 10PM when the sleepover train tips over into bed and the lights are out.

Yuma wanted the spot next to the wall, and Ryoga probably wanted the spot next to Yuma, so Kaito ends up next to Ryoga, too. He has trouble sleeping because he happens to own a smartphone now and texts Chris under the covers and does his best to ignore the looming threat that is the rest of his life.

When the soft snoring starts, Ryoga speaks up again.

"Kaito."

"Yeah?"

"Fuck you."

"Whoa there, buddy. Yuma fell asleep like, five seconds ago, I don't think he's REM enough yet."

"You are _disgusting_."

"And you snuggle."

Ryoga shifts a little; the wager is farther away, but his voice is closer when he whispers, "You come into my home. You wear IV merch. You insult my sleeping habits."

And somewhere between his next retort and a good night, sweet dreams, we can flirt tomorrow, Kaito's tongue stumbles, "My dad's kicking me out."

"I'll kick _you_ out—What?"

He rolls onto his back and closes his eyes, talking more to himself than the person beside him. "I mean, he hasn't really, he kind of gave me the option but like hell I'm taking it, so I've been thinking, Plan A. What I was gonna do before. It's not, like, _exactly_ what I wanna do, 'cause I don't know what that is anymore, but it's something."

"So, Ursa?"

"I'm gonna apply, I guess."

"Kinda late."

"Maybe for Spring."

Slowly, sleepily, from Yuma's side, "What about Plan K?"

Both of them start, not having noticed the lack of snores.

"Plan K?"

A yawn, and Yuma stretches, sits up. "Plan Kattobingu. Isn't there something you care about most of all?"

Haruto.

"Maybe. Either way…"

"I'll think about it," says Ryoga abruptly, and he pulls the covers over his head and rolls over.


	22. O & K

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to Bao and Hika. I dedicate this fic to all my friends and this entire fandom, but you're both my number 1.
> 
> The last chapter is _supposed_ to be an omake, like the scene after the credits roll, but I don't know when I'll end up writing, and if I do, if I'll attach it here. So this is the end!
> 
> Thank you to everyone for the ride.

His dad picks him up from school the next day?

Like, Ryoga was gonna give him a ride on Shark Drake again and they were planning on having a proper funeral for their daughter and also their grade (now that they know they can try again but they'll only get up to a C), but they head outside and the car is standing there in the first spot, Dr. Faker sitting in the seat and playing with his phone and just not looking like he belongs. Kaito wants to walk right past him and into the bushes, but Yuma sees him and smiles and nods in the good doctor's direction, so Kaito has no choice.

He takes the back seat, which is what he usually does but since Haruto's not there with him it looks kind of stupid and feels pretty awkward, but it would feel pretty awkward anyway, and this prevents any conversation that might've happened. iPhone up and earbuds in, he listens to whatever music comes up and makes sure it's loud enough that his dad can hear, and there's something about the song and staring out the window like he's in a sad music video that helps.

He lets his thoughts whirl around with the song and the songs, ones from before March and ones from after September, and somewhere in July, he gets an idea, sudden as the freezing water that falls down your neck in a Moridian shower when someone downstairs flushes the toilet.

The cat poop goes down the drain.

He gets an idea, and he thinks it's probably a stupid idea, because it's a new idea, and it's a weird idea, but it's an idea, and he sits there and he thinks about it, looks out the window looks at the rear view looks up and looks down and thinks, yeah, actually, I could be good at that, I know I could, and he thinks that maybe this is something he wants to do, maybe this is somewhere he wants to go, and he can feel it sitting in his chest like maybe this is... this is _something_.

When they get home his dad wants to talk but Kaito just runs up to his room and pulls open the drawer that's empty but for the journal where he writes things down that are embarrassing and he doesn't want anyone else to see, things like his poems, things like old ideas, things like _kurisu_ in katakana and _ryoga_ in kanji and _$12.40_.

He scribbles a thought and he dates it and it says, _Plan K_.

Then he scrambles up his phone and calls Yuma and he's breathing so fast that he can't actually speak when Yuma says, "Hello?"

"Medical," Kaito says in greeting.

"Huh?"

"A doctor," he repeats. "Medical. That's Plan K."

And it sounds stupid, it just sounds _so stupid_ because he's Kaito and he's introverted and he doesn't talk to people and he doesn't like kids and he doesn't like teenagers and he doesn't like adults, but this is something that he thinks he doesn't mind learning about, because god his little brother is hurting and god his body has hurt him and _god_ people always hurt each other, but if there's something Kaito wants to do it's be someone who figures this out, save his little girl whether she's biological or robotic or a little bit of both.

So maybe if he doesn't go to Ursa he can go to the place next to it, Leo or whatever, and saying it to Yuma just makes it seem more real, makes it seem more sincere, like giving Yuma a piece of his heart was trusting Yuma to keep it safe, to keep it solid.

So Kaito might be kind of okay.

More than that. When he hangs up he looks in the mirror and he runs his hands in his hair and he still has some problems and he still has some work to do but he tries to smile at himself, and it… isn't hard.

It's easy. It's nice.

And Kaito is okay.

_let me go, set me free_  
 _i feel a bit older_  
 _just once more unto the breach_  
 _dear friend, once more_


	23. ends & beginnings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here is the epilogue! with this i wave a final wave good-bye to zexal and this fic alongside 2014.
> 
> love to everyone here, love to all of my friends!

Christopher Arclight wants to arrive on Kaito's doorstep on December 25th, 2011.

"That is the most cliché bullshit I've ever heard," Kaito tells him over Skype, because, wow, how about _no_ , talk about embarrassing boyfriends?

"You mean you wouldn't grin all big and run into me for a hug?"

"I would slam the door in your face."

"Wow," says Chris. "I'm hurt."

"Think of the poor door your nose'll hit."

Chris snorts, and Kaito, who's working on an essay due tomorrow—the last day of school before winter break mercifully settles in—pauses in his dissertation. "I'm serious," he says, looking straight into the camera. "I'll do it."

"I believe you," says Chris, and so he doesn't arrive on Christmas morning ( _ugh_ ). Instead the first half of Kaito's day is spent with his brother and his dad and half-hearted ceremony (full-hearted with Haruto, no-hearted with Dad), and the second half is at Yuma's because Ryoga's family went to the Bahamas or something and won't be back until New Year's Eve—which, incidentally, happens to be the day Chris _does_ show up, rings the doorbell and Kaito's dad opens it, so Chris raises a hand and grins and says hello.

Faker shuts the door on him. Which.

Kaito comes down two minutes later, opens the door, steps outside and—deliberately—on Chris's toes. He doesn't look in the least surprised by Chris's appearance three hundred miles south of where he should be. Doesn't look impressed, either, when he crosses his arms and leans against the doorframe, but there's something about how his hair is a bird's nest and his general state of disarray that kind of gives him away.

Chris says in greeting, "Your shirt's on backwards."

"What if you came down here and I was cheating on you. Right here, right now, at this very minute."

Chris quirks an eyebrow, smiling. "Surprise?"

"Surprise," agrees Kaito, and bites his lip to restrain himself from outright grinning. "I'll, uh, be right back," he adds, and slips inside to get dressed and let Haruto know that he's going out and he's not entirely sure when he'll be back, yes he does promise to enjoy himself, yeah, he loves Haruto, too.

Then he's outside again in his V-neck and his Portal hoodie and his jeans, his hair set properly, and Chris nods at him and Kaito's like, "What?" and Chris just goes, "You look good," and Kaito scowls because that seems like the appropriate reaction and drags his boyfriend on their first Official date. Capital totally necessary.

They're halfway to LA when the desperate texts start coming in. He's not too pressed to check them, really, but when his phone won't stop vibrating Chris asks what's wrong and if Kaito's ignoring someone, and since powering Orbital off is unheard of and this is really starting to get annoying, Kaito sighs and looks.

[ _dude YUMA wants to do something with us_ ]  
[ _like rn_ ]  
[ _he said so_ ]  
[ _"I wanna hang out with U 2day!!! xD"_ ]  
[ _so_ ]  
[ _come over_ ]

[ _Kinda busy_ ]

[ _TOO BUSY FOR YUMA?????_ ]

[ _yeah._ ]  
[ _he didn't say anything to me about it?_ ]

[ _he prolly didn't realize_ ]  
[ _or wanted me to tell u_ ]

[ _sure._ ]  
[ _have you considered maybe he's asking you, singular_ ]  
[ _emphasis on single_ ]

There are a whole lot of ellipses following that, but no message actually comes. Kaito scowls at his phone.

"Everything alright?" Chris asks, leaning over.

"Just a dumbass."

[ _lifehack: get a life_ ]

[ _...wtf_ ]  
[ _how am i supposed to use that lifehack w/o a life]_

[ _figure it out_ ]

[ _kaito_ ]

[ _oh my god what_ ]

[ _what do i do_ ]

[ _say yes_ ]

[ _wtf_ ]  
[ _that's a terrible idea_ ]

[ _say no_ ]

[ _where r u_ ]

[ _Transylvania_ ]

[ _your location services are on_ ]

[ _what_ ]

[ _i'm binging YUMA to LA_ ]  
[ _binging*_ ]  
[ _BRINGING_ ]

And that's how he spends a good portion of his first Official date looking out for his dumb friends in a packed city where by all logic, Kaito and Chris should be virtually unfindable. He just knows that Yuma'll find a way somehow, and he doesn't know how the hell Ryoga tapped into his location services but he shuts that off, sticks his phone deep in his coat pocket, too, finally puts his hand in Chris's and gives him full attention.

(Hey, Ryoga and Yuma are here _together_ at least; even if it's not a date, maybe they'll be next to each other come 2012, maybe they'll hold hands to avoid getting separated in the crowd, maybe Ryoga'll finally…)

* * *

[あけましておめでとう!]

[ _not yet_ ]

[ _photons. always so much slower than tachyonic particles._ ]

[ _tachyons are a myth. like you._ ]

[ _legendary, you mean?_ ]

[ _mizaeru no densetsu: toki no get bent_ ]

[ _fighting evil by moonlight—_ ]  
[ _but anyway!_ ]  
[ _happy new year, kaito._ ]  
[ _miss the fam now more than usual._ ]

[ _yeah..._ ]  
[ _happy new year_ ]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ _and..._ ]  
> [ _thanks!_ ]


End file.
